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i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ' 



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POEMS 



BY 



WILLIAM W. STORY, 




BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. 

M.DCCC.LVI. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

Little, Brown and Company, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



RIVERSIDE, Cambridge: 

PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



TO 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

this volume is 

inscribed 

in testimony of a friendship 

which, beginning in childhood, has only deepened and 

strengthened with ti3ie ; 

and as a tribute of esteem, admiration, and love 

for his high poetic genius; his exuberant 

humor and wit ; his delightful social 

qualities; and his pure and 

noble character. 



\ 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
1 



38 
44 
46 



CASTLE PALO 

THE THREE SINGERS 

IN THE WEST 

IN THE EAST 

THE LESSON OF MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO . • 47 

ON THE DESERT ^° 

THE BEGGAR ^1 

THE CONFESSIONAL ^^ 

AN ESTRANGEMENT ^4 

IN ST. Peter's °° 

THE NECKAN ^^ 

THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI 1^4 

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI . . * • • ^^^ 

IN THE MOUNTAINS ^^^ 

LOVE ^^^ 

SHADOWS AND VOICES AT TWILIGHT . . .136 



VI CONTENTS. 

Page 

A TESTAMENT . 139 

ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND 143 

THE MARCHESE CASTELLO GIVES HIS VIEWS ON 

ITALY . 152 

THE BATTLE OF MORAT 172 

THE PINE 181 

VENICE . 185 

THE LOCUST 188 

BETWEEN TWELVE AND ONE 194 

TO J— s— 196 

THE BROKEN HARP 200 

AUNT RACHEL'S STORY ...... 202 

AT DIEPPE 219 

FAIRY LAND 221 

THE VIOLET 224 

THE TORRENT 226 

TO J. S 228 

COUPLETS 232 

AT THE VILLA CONTI 257 

THE BLACK-LETTER TEXT 268 

SONNET 270 

THE AUTUMN CYCLAMEN 271 

DIRGE .273 

THE BIVOUAC 274 



V 



CONTENTS. vii 

Page 

ARTEMIS 276 

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 278 

SAPPHO •••...... 286 

SONG 287 

TO G. W. C. AND C. P. C 289 

THE LOCUST-TREES 291 

SORRENTO 293 

PROLOGUE 296 

I^'ENVOI 306 



POEMS. 



CASTLE PALO. 

" 'Tis a bleak, wild place, for a legend fit," 
I thought, as I spelt out over the gate 
The Latin inscription, -with name and date. 
So rusted and crusted with lichens old, 
So rotted and spotted by rain and mould, 
That in vain I strove to decipher it. 
The whole place seemed as if it were dead, 
So silent the sunshine over it shed 
Its golden light, — and the grasses tall, 
1 



15 CASTLE PALO. 

That quivered in clefts of the crumbling wall, 
And a lizard that glanced with noiseless run 
Over the moss-grown broken shield, 
And panting, stood in the afternoon sun, — 
Alone a token of life revealed. 

Th^ castle was silent as a dream, — 
And its shadow into the courtyard slanted. 
Longer and longer climbing the wall 
Slowly to where the lizard panted. 
All was still — save the running fall 
Of the surf-waves under the stern sea-wall. 
As they plunged along with a shaking gleam, — 
And I said to myself — "The place is haunted." 

I to myself seemed almost weird 
As I mused there, touched by a sort of spell, — 
Whether 'twas real or all ideal, 
The castle, the sea, and myself as well, 
I was not sure, I could not tell. 
The whole so like a vision appeared, — 



CASTLE PALO. 

When near me upon the stones I heard 
A footfall, that with its echo woke 
The sleeping courtyard, and strangely broke 
In on my dream, — as a pool is stirred 
By a sudden stone in its silence thrown, — 
And turning romid, at my side I foimd 
A mild old man w^th a snowy beard. 

He seemed a sort of servitor. 
By the drab half-Hvery he wore ; 
And his quiet look of pride subdued. 
Mixed with an air of deference, showed 
That he bore an office of service and trust. 
Something there was in liim fitted my mood, 
And rhymed with the ruin and sadness and rust 
Of the grim old castle, — a sort of gTace, 
Dreary and sad, looked out of his face ; 
A dimmed reflection it seemed to have caught 
From a nobler mind and a higher thought ; 
As if he had held a trusted place 
With one of a loftier fortune and race. 



4 CASTLE PALO. 

" This is a dreary and desolate spot," 
Turning I said to him : "Is there not 
Some story or legend of the dead 
That hath grown about it?" — He shook his head, 
And sighed, — and pointing his veined hand 
Through a rift in the wall, I saw below, 
A dim old figure upon the sand, 
That musingly wandered to and fro 
Wrapped in a cloak, and with downcast head ; 
" You see him, that is the Prince," he said. 

" The Prhice ? why surely no one hves 
In this desolate spot, with its fever air, 
So deadly although it seems so fair!" 
" No," he answered, " he's only here 
For this single day ; but every year. 
Just when the autunm is shaking the leaves, 
For a single day, come rain or storm. 
You will meet his noble and princely form, 
(For a prince you would not doubt him to be, 
Old as he is, and shaken by time. 



CASTLE PALO. < 

And so changed from what he was in his prime,) 
Wandermg alone along the sea, 
Musing and sighing constantly. 

"Why? your wondering eyes ask; well, 
If you command me, the story I'll tell ; 
Would you be pleased to stand, or sit 
On this old stone bench, while I tell you it? 

" Our Villa, perhaps, you never have seen ; 
It lies on the slope of the Alban hill ; 
Lifting its white face, sunny and still, 
Out of the olives' pale grey green. 
That, far away as the eye can go. 
Stretch up behmd it, row upon row. 
There, in the garden, the cypresses, stirred 
By the sifting wmds, half-musing talk. 
And the cool, fresh, constant voice is heard 
Of the fountains spilHng in every walk. 
There stately the oleaaders gi'ow. 
And one long grey wall is arglow 



6 CASTLE PALO. 

With golden oranges burning between 

Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green, 

And there are hedges all clipped and square, 

As carven from blocks of malachite. 

Where fountains keep spinning their threads of light, 

And statues whiten the shadow there. 

And, if the sun too fiercely shine, 

And one would creep from its noonday glare, 

There are galleries dark, where ilexes twine 

Their branchy roofs above the head. 

Or when at twilight the heats decline, 

If one but cross the terraces. 

And lean o'er the marble balustrade, 

Between the vases whose aloes high 

Show their sharp pike-heads against the sky. 

What a sight — Madonna mia — he sees! 

There stretches our great campagna beneath. 

And seems to breathe a rosy breath 

Of hght and mist, as in peace it sleeps, — 

And summery thunder-clouds of rain. 

With their slanting spears, run over the plain. 



CASTLE PALO. 

And rush at the rums, or routed, fly 

To the mountains that hft their barriers high, 

And stand with their purple pits of shades 

Spht by the sharp-edged hmestone blades, 

With opaline lights and tender grades 

Of color, that flicker and swoon and die. 

Built up hke a wall against the sky. 

" And this is our villa, where years ago. 
When I was a youth and just had come 
To the Prince's service, he made his home 
For the summer months — how time does flow ! 
I was in love then, and many a time 
To Mariuccia I made a rhyme ; 
For I was a poet in my small way. 
Love makes all of us poets, they say — 
Poor Mariuccia ! well, no matter. 
She's happier now I must suppose. 
But she seemed to be happy here — God knows, 
And we do not rightly understand ; 
And when those that we love are taken away. 



8 CASTLE PALO. 

'Tis hard to see why we should stay ; 

But it is not long that the trembling sand 

Will shake in my hour-glass, and — Well ! well ! 

'Tis not my story I meant to tell — 

But somehow or other the old forms rise, 

And you'll pardon the tears in these old eyes. 

" I was a youth when I came to service 
With the old Prince, fifty years since ; 
A better master no man could find ; 
And I always did my best to deserve his 
Favor, and had it ; and when the young Prince 
Don Paolo, in whom his mind 
And heart and hope were wholly centred, 
Grew up to a youth, he gave me charge. 
Having trust in me, to wait upon him. 
And gladly I did, — for a heart more large, 
Into which no vulgar thought e'er entered. 
Was never born than Don Paolo's was. 
He had but few of the follies that swim 
On the surface of youth, mere straws and dust 



CASTLE PALO. 

That sometimes float on the clearest stream. 

And I grew to love liim, and he to trust ; 

And the years went on with an easy fleetness ; 

He growing and ripening every day, 

And strengthening into a large, broad sweetness. 

And day by day childhood gave way 

In his dark mild eyes to a look of pride 

And manly confidence and power, 

As one who recognized the dower 

He was born unto, — and I at his side 

Could not but feel how each hour's remove 

Parted our mmds, though not our love. 

" And so youth swift as childhood passed, 
And he grew to be a man at last. 
And love, hke a careless spark of fire. 
Dropped in the forest's leafy ways. 
Touching his heart when heaping full 
Of drifting wishes and dim desire. 
In a moment set it all a-blaze. 
' Twas the Donna Giulia's noble air 



10 CASTLE PALO. 

That took his heart so by surprise, 

With her large, dark-shadowed wondrous eyes. 

And velvet ohve skin, and hair 

All raven dark -with a sheeny glare. 

That over her brow so low and square 

Was parted thick, and gleaming lay. 

Heaped low behind in a heavy braid 

Of serpent folds that overAveighed 

The dehcate chm, and nestling laid 

Close up to the small, fine ear, where, red 

As her rosy lips, two coral drops 

Against her ripe cheek dangled and played 

Just where its rounded outline stops. 

" She came from Naples one summer day. 
And after that, he was always away ; 
Or if he came home, the things that were there 
Seemed to annoy liim, — there was no rest for him;- 
Lonely he wandered, — hated society, — 
All the old joys had lost their zest for him, 
All things at home brought only satiety. 



CASTLE PALO. 11 

Sometimes across the comitry he'd gallop 

Madlj ; and then, as suddenly pull up 

And loose the reins of his horse, all reeking. 

And pull down his hat, and mwardlj speaking, 

Stare at the ground or the landscape about him. 

With an eye that saw nothing of all without liim. 

Lost in some coil of confused thinking ; 

Then with a jerk the bridle clinking. 

His spm-s m the flanks of old Tebro he'd bury. 

As if from some thought that had stung him to hurry. 

" The Prince and the Prmcess were bhnd at first, 
As fathers and mothers always are ; 
But Donna Amia, Don Paolo's sister. 
Who always was with him, suspected the worst, 
And grew jealous and peevish, and used to enhst her 
Sharpest wit, when she found that she missed her 
Daily friend ; and I must say 
That better game and a sharper shooter 
One would not find in a summer's day. 
But all in vain ; he grew muter and muter, 



12 CASTLE PALO. 

Or pleaded sucli plainly fictitious excuses 

To be alone — that her jesting persistence 

She changed for a proud and silent distance, 

As if she were wronged, — but all her ruses 

Ne'er in the least availed to loose his 

Obstinate silence, until at last, her 

Patience exhausted, she suddenly cast her 

Snowy arms over Paolo's shoulder, 

And began to fondle him, kiss him, and tease him, 

Saying she never now could please him ; 

That he used to love her, but now all was over, 

That he ceased to be brother because he was lover. 

Ending at last in a passionate weeping. 

That touched poor Paolo so, that he told her. 

And she got his secret hito her keeping, — 

(And such keeping it was with this Eve's fair 

daughter 
As a very fine colander's keeping of water, 
A constant, imperceptible dripping) — 
But he for the very telling grew bolder. 
And she burnished his hopes with her counsel tender. 



CASTLE PALO. 13 

And ere the month was a week's time older 
The Giulian fortress was pleased to surrender. 

" And so this question at last was settled 
To the Prince's and Princess's great surprise, 
Who, when they were told of it, opened their eyes 
With wonder and pleasure, — and contracts were 

drawn. 
Putting those two young hearts in pawn ; 
And papers were signed, — and one bright dawn 
Donna Giuha rode into the court 
With Don Paolo, on a steed high mettled. 
And reined him up with a sniff and snort. 
And glanced around with her sharp wild eyes 
Where the hghtnings were scarcely sheathed, and 

dropped 
Into Paolo's arms as the horses stopped. 

" The Prince and Princess came forth to receive 
her ; 
And there, while she stood at Don Paolo's side. 



14 CASTLE PALO. 

Who gazed at her with a smile of pride 

Softened by love, as if he defied 

The world to spy a fault in liis bride, 

My eyes could never a moment leave her ; 

Something there was of strange and wild, 

A kind of hurried and startled look 

In her long black eyes, when under their lashes 

They suddenly glanced, — hke the gleam of a brook. 

That under the dense woods darkling flashes 

As it sweeps to its fall, — and when she smiled, 

A sudden glance like summer lightning 

Passed over her face, for a moment bright'ning 

With a gleam of dazzling teeth, and then 

Betaking the strange weird look again, 

The fine lips closely and nervously tight'ning ; 

Yet there was something of winning grace 

In the swaying form and the tremulous face, — 

And there, as she stood on the balustrade, 

Touched with gleams of sun and shade. 

While a sense of uneasy consciousness 

Through her diaphonous cheek was glowing, 



CASTLE PALO. 15 

And moulding to its bashful stress 

Her every movement, despite her dissembling 

Of an easy confidence, that I 

Felt my heart drawn uneasily 

Towards her, and all my feelings trembling 

Like the snowy ostrich-plume that was blowing 

And ripphng on her hat, where it set 

Fixed by a large blood-red aigrette, — 

Though I could not explain the how and why. 

" Soon came the wedding, with festal bells 
And rusthng of silk and stiff brocade 
And gleamy satin, and musHn thin 
As woven fog that the spiders spin ; 
And jewels heaved -with the bosom swells 
Of stately women, whose white arms bare 
Clmked their golden manacles ; 
And laughter and buzz of humming talk 
Rose confused through the lighted rooms. 
Where the air was thick with rich perfumes, — 



16 CASTLE PALO. 

And the chandeliers sent forth their glare 

Through the open windows, and ht the stalk 

Of the fountain that spilled in the open walk, — 

And music through all the reeling hall 

Throbbed to a hundred dancing feet, 

And thrilled through the marble-pillared doors 

And the stately pictured corridors, 

Where youth and beauty, and age and care, 

And love and hate, went to and fro. 

Sweeping the flowers in the vases rare 

That stood on every marble stair, — 

Or talking along the portico. 

And noblest of all the nobles there 

Went our Don Paolo ! 

How grand and glad that night he seemed, 

To me it was as if I dreamed. 

When I thought of the time when he used to run 

With his hand in mine along the walk, 

And lisp with a boyish confident talk, 

And boast of the little nothino;s he'd done. 



CASTLE PALO. 17 

''And the Donna Giulia's eyes, like mine, 
Gazed after Mm,- as at a thing divine ; 
And through her cheek, her feelings, like wine 
In a deHcate goblet, glowed and shone. — 
I could have laid down my life to serve her, 
When I saw her gaze mth such passionate fervor 
After his figui*e wherever it moved, 
As if, for all she so deeply loved. 
She dared not think he was all her own. 

" How often I live that night again. 
And taste its joy in a cup of pain ; 
How I remember, while I was starinir 
In at the door, and looking at him, 
Half as it were in a sort of dream, 
He caught my eye, and forward he came 
With that old frank way and noble bearing. 
And his hand on my shoulder placing, he said, 
'Can you believe it, dear friend, — ('tis true 
Dear friend, he said, — those were his words, 
The very words he said, — 'Dear friend,' 
2 



18 CASTLE PALO. 

I shall remember them till my end,) 

That 'tis twenty long, long years since you 

Taught me to talk; they seem to have sped, 

To me, like the swiftest flight of birds. 

Like a long, long flight of geese ; ' and a smile 

Here struck with its sunlight across his face. 

And made him look, for a moment's space. 

Like the picture of the great old Prince, 

Painted by Titian, in his youth. 

As I have so often seen it, while 

The sunset shone on it where it hangs, 

Or used to hang some ten years since. 

The first and handsomest of a score 

That hang along the corridor, — 

Well, just such a flash of sun went o'er 

His face as he spoke, — in very truth, 

I should have thought 'twas the picture alive, 

Only it had not the armor on. 

As he called his years a flight of geese — 

And, ' Well,' he added, ' dear friend, they've gone, 

To you too as swiftly, I do not doubt; 



CASTLE PALO. 19 

And many a long one more may you live, 
And many a long one more may you thrive 
Before God calls you to his peace ; 
But to-day shall not pass away without 
My heartiest thanks and my heartiest blessing 
For all your kindness.' 
Then suddenly, without waiting an answer. 
For he saw that something my heart was oppressing 
That kept me from speakmg, and filled with blind- 
ness 
My eyes, he left me — but half a man, sir ! 

" Then off they went on their wedding journey. 
And the house was solemn and dull enough ; 
Domia Anna wished and sighed, and the tough 
Old Prince was a little stern and gruff, 
And thinking alone of his son's return, he 
Went wandering aimless about. At last, 
Just as the time w^as nearly passed 
When Paolo should bring back his bride, 
Csime a letter to say, that he should go 



20 CASTLE PALO. 

On his homeward way, for a day or so, 
Or more, should it afterwards suit their whim, 
To the castle old by the salt sea-side, 
And I was sent down to prepare for him. 

" This is the castle here ; 
And a place more bleak and drear 
You might seek without finding for many a year. 
All round, wherever the eye can strain, 
Stretches a barren, desolate plain. 
Thinly clad with wild, fine grasses. 
Through which the free wind sighing passes 
As it roams alone, — with here and there 
A stunted shrub, to make more bare 
Its wildness; or on some swelhng knoll 
A haycock's grey pyramid and pole. 
That with rain and sun grows old and bleaches, - 
Till miles away the landscape reaches 
To those climbing hills, where blackened patches 
Of fohage darken on their sides, 
And that old grey cloud lowering rides. 



CASTLE PALO. 21 

Seaward, far off, there's a tree-fringed tongue 

Of land, that into the sea outstretches. 

With a purple swell of mountains swung 

On the water's rim as far as you see. 

Where that great gull flaps so heavily. 

But just turn round, can any thing be 

More lonely and mid than the castle is. 

With its four round turrets and grim flat face, 

Lookmg over the sea that beats at its base ; 

And its courtyard, where the fountain drips 

In the old sarcophagus under the steps. 

All green with mould, where that lizard sHps, — 

And its flapping shutters, and windows grated. 

Here pierced, and there, as the whim dictated. — 

Can any thing be more dreary than this ? 

" You see it now in a sunny time, 
And this Koman sunshine enchants the slopes 
Of the barren plains, as youthful hopes 
Turn the dreariest day to rhyme ; 
But when the ni^ht of our chill Decembers 



22 CASTLE PALO. 

Shuts in at the close of a lowering day, 

And the winds roar down from the distance 

And rattle the shutters, and scatter the embers. 
As they howl down the chimney's blackened 

throat, 
And over the old searwall, and under 
Those ruined arches with thump and thunder. 
Whitens the surf in the stormy night; 
And the cold owl hoots in the mouldering moat. 
And the wild gull screams as he hurries by. 
And the dog sneaks close by the blaze to snore, 
And starts from his sleep to answer again 
The desolate long-drawn howl of pain 
Of the wolf-dog, prowhng afar on the moor. 
There are sounds in this castle enough to affright 
The bravest heart, and for my part, I 
Know that the ghosts of the family 
Who have fallen by sword, and disease, and 

murder. 
On such terrible nights keep watch and warder. 



CASTLE PALO. 23 

" Well, the family here came down to meet 
Don Paolo, with right willing feet. 
And all of their friends, with their equipages. 
And liveried riders and liveried pages. 
Came down to pic-nic m the castle ; 
And horses snorted and neighed in the court, 
And all was hurry and gladness and bustle; 
And the banner spread on the turret made sport 
With the dallying wind, and the hall so wide 
Rang with voices on every side ; 
And a shout of welcome rent the air 
As Don Paolo leaped from his curricle there, — 
The bells on his horses chnking and ringing, 
As they shook their proud heads, champing and 

flinging 
White flecks of foam o'er their reeking liide, — 
And gave his hand to his laughing bride. 

" So they talked and feasted the livelong daj, 
And strolled along on the shingly beach, 
And roamed o'er the castle, and danced in the hall, 



24 CASTLE PALO. 

And made the Pifferari screech 

With their swollen pipes, and all was gay, 

With music and mirth and festival. 

The Contadine, ah ! they were so glad, 

All in their festal costmnes clad. 

O'er bursting bosoms the busto laced. 

Spanning with scarlet their ample waist ; 

Red coral coUanas around their neck, 

And great, long, dangling ear-rings of gold. 

And the stiff tovagha's snowy fold. 

Roofing their head — without a speck. 

'Twas a joy to see them dancing there. 

To the rub and drone of the tamburello, 

Rich in their hearts, and without a care. 

As they whirled hi the endless Saltarello, — 

Now panting and blazing with heat and mirth. 

Now restuig and laughing, or jesting and quaffing 

The blushing wine, of which none was a scorner, 

That spilled from the barrel set in the corner; 

No merrier day was there ever on earth. 



. CASTLE PALO. 25 

" And so the day went hj, and some, 
Tired of merriment, had departed, 
And some still lingered, the younger-hearted. 
To make for a single night their home 
In the castle, and journey next day to Rome 
With the bride and bridegroom when they started ; 
And the tA\alight greened arid died in the west. 
And the full moon over the swelling breast 
Of the eastern sea with a red glare clomb — 
And some were wandering far away 
On the foam-dashed sand, and others stood 
On the battlements of the castle grey. 
Watching the moon rise over the flood. 
And some were in the courtyard there. 
And groups were scattered everywhere. 

" I was standing just by the shore. 
As it were in a sort of a dream, 
Thinking the day and its gladness o'er. 
And the difference betwixt me and them. 
How I was so old, and poor, and grey, 



26 CASTLE PALO. 

And they were so young, and rich, and gay, 

When all of a sudden a fearful scream, 

Shrill and wild, rang in my ear. 

That made my whole scalp rise with fear ; 

And there, as I stood, a figure rushed by. 

With its arms flung upward against the sky. 

And glancing at me, (Good God ! were those 

eyes 
Donna Giuha's eyes, that glared at me so,) 
Uttered another thrilling cry. 
Just like the first, — then turned with a dash, 
And out o'er those ruined arches' ledge. 
Wildly fled to their dizzy edge. 
And vanished ; — and I heard a splash, 
A low dull splash, in the waters below. 

" I stood for a moment, as if in a trance, 
I could not move a hand or hmb, 
But I thought, 'tis only some horrible whim. 
That could not have been Donna Giuha's glance ;- 
I had a sense as if I stood 



CASTLE PALO. 27 

Rooted an age there, or ever I could 

Gather and fix myself to one 

Definite thought to act upon. 

Oh ! it is easy enough to see, 

Here as we stand so quietly, 

That the thing to do was to rush and save 

Whoever it was from a watery grave ; * 

But all my thoughts were scattered about, 

And I could not gather them up again, 

And my senses were all hke a tangled skein 

Of night-mare fancies tied in a knot. 

" It was but a moment, I suppose. 
Though it seemed a whole eternity. 
Before I was down in the swelling sea, 
And beatmg through its great gi-een walls. 
That toppled, quivering with flashing snows. 
And swimming deep where the moonshine crawls. 
Just there, 'neath the arch at the end of the pier, 
Graspmg after wliite folds that rose 
And puffed, and sank, until at last, 



28. CASTLE PALO. 

After the agony of a year, 

As it seemed to me, — thank God it's past — 

I dragged a pale white figure, that drooped 

Over my arm, to the shoe-deep sand. 

Trailing on it a lifeless hand, 

And felt a crowd, that around me stooped 

With a buzz of horror, and some one cried, 

"Tis Donna Giulia — 'Tis the bride' — 

Then all my senses staggered, and swooped 

Into a pit of blackest night. 

And my skull crushed in with a terrible pain, 

And stars shot round me a fiery rain. 

And serpents crawled in my dizzy brain. 

And all things vanished from me quite. 

" How it was, I afterwards learned, 
When my shattered senses returned ; — 
Ah ! I thought there was too much fight 
In those wild eyes, when I saw them first ; 
Something too sharp and overbright, 
As of a thing divine that was curst — 



CASTLE PALO. 29 

"VVliile they were sitting, bridegroom and bride, 

On yon jutting rock by the water's side, 

And the growth of their young love tasting o'er, 

And she was lying upon his breast. 

Gazing up at the rounded moon, 

Wliile his one arm was round her thrown. 

And their Hps at times to each other pressed. 

As to drink each other's being strove. 

Their soft eyes humid with passionate love ; 

Suddenly over her countenance 

Shot a change, like a hghtning's glance. 

And a terrible hght, wild and insane. 

Through their dilating pupils darted. 

That seemed vnth. hate and horror to strain. 

Up to her feet, as if stung, she started. 

And through her nervous lips the light 

Of her snowy teeth showed to the night. 

As she uttered that fearful maniac scream 

That startled the night from its peaceful rest. 

And lifting on high a dagger's gleam. 

She held concealed in her inner vest. 



30 CASTLE PALO. 

Plunged it swift in her lover's breast, 
And madly fleeing along the shore, 
Dashed into the sea — as I told you before. 

" When I awoke from my blankness and swoon. 
All was still in the castle there. 
And in at my window was shining the moon, 
Mockingly, with its face so fair ; 
The guests were gone, the surgeon had come. 
In the halls was heard a whispered hum, 
And careful steps were coming and going. 
And listeners stood outside her door. 
That an anxious, weary aspect wore, 
And everything else was sad and still. 
Save now and then, when a shriek so shrill 
That it scared us, and stopped our blood from 

flowing. 
Left the silence stiller than before. 

" The wound in his breast was slight, I mean 
The bodily wound, but the wound unseen 



CASTLE PALO. 31 

Was ghastly ; and no one could afterwards know 

The frank, gay hearted, Don Paolo. 

He went hke a man with a barb m his heart. 

And his smile was so dreary it made one weep, 

He hamited the castle and w^ould not depart. 

And paced his room long nights without sleep. 

As we knew by the rafters overhead. 

That creaked with his fitful, pausing tread ; 

And up and do^vn the corridor. 

On the dusty arras that heavily sagged. 

And its fringe o'er the pavement rustling dragged, 

As the night wind sucked through the struggling 

door. 
And made the hall-hght bend and flare. 
We saw his uneasy shadow go, 
Shrink and shake, and rising grow 
To a giant shape, till it darkened o'er 
The great hall-window's blear white square, — 
And oft as he wandered up and down. 
Stretching his arms against the wall. 
He would hide his face, and inwardly groan. 



6Z CASTLE PALO. 

With shivering spasms that throbbed through all 

His agonized frame, — as a noble oak 

That totters under the axe's stroke, 

And quivers all over ere it fall — 

Often, at length, along the floor. 

Weary with pacing to and fro, 

Upon the sill of her chamber door 

He lay, and hstened her voice to hear, 

In an agony of love and fear, 

Weeping himself away in woe, — 

Till the worn-out body yielded at last, 

And out of the pain of waking passed ; 

But never dared he within to go. 

For a terrible fever in body and brain. 

Through her thoughts like a savage demon ranged, 

And coiled round her heart, and all was changed 

From love to hate, and from joy to pain. 

" Once, as soon as his wound would permit. 
He dragged to her door his trembling frame. 
And softly entering, breathed her name 



CASTLE PALO. 3l 

In the dearest words that tongue could speak ; — 
But no sooner heard she his voice than she knit 
Her low, dark brows, and glarmg round 
With wandermg ejes, gave a fearful shriek. 
Sprang for an instant to the ground. 
Then, fell m a long and deathlike fit. 

'' Health to the body at last came back, 
But the mind had lost forever the track 
It had wandered from, — in a forest wild. 
Of tangled fancies, she roamed alone 
Where none could follow, and often smiled, 
With that vacant smile, that makes one gi'oan. 
It shows how utterly all has Aotvti. 
For hours she stood at that casement there, 
And drummed on the pane with her fingers fair ; 
Or sat and twisted them mornings long. 
Singing strange scraps of disjointed song, 
But over the door-sill she never would go, 
And never would see Don Paolo — 
Often with patientest schemes he strove, 
3 



34 CASTLE PALO. 

To call her back to the thought of love, 

But his voice alone seemed to madden her brain, 

And at last he gave it up as vain. 

" You know the demon that haunts the air, 
That sleeps on these stretches, so bleak and bare. 
The fever that shakes us with fire and ice — 
Well, she seemed to defy it, and grew^ more fair, 
Breathing it in, as if the devil 
That raged in her brain had some device 
To shield her from all other forms of evil : — 
But on him, with sorrow wasted away, 
It fell, like a tiger, on its prey, 
And with her name last on his pallid lips. 
That dear, brave spirit, went its way. 
Into the shadow of death's eclipse. 
In the twilight close of an autumn day. . 

" I smoothed those dark locks on liis brow, — 
His dome-like brow, which death had made 
So calm and grand, and full of peace ; — 



CASTLE PALO. 35 

A humble, reverential kiss, 

Upon its marble cold I laid, 

And a prayer of tearful thanks I prayed 

To God, who had given him release 

From all that we on earth must know; 

For I could not look at that face so still. 

So still and calm, but it seemed to say, 

' Out of the struggle of earthly ill. 

Into peace and love, I have passed away.' 

" I could not weep for him, I wept ♦ 

For myself, and the mother, but more than all 
For that old man, — for a terrible pall 
Fell over him then, which nothing has swept 
For years away, and nothing will. 
Till he lies by his son, beneath the turf ; — 
You see the grave there, beside the wall. 
Where he told us to lay him, in sight of the 

surf ; 
Well, there we laid him, and ever since. 
On the day he died, ('tis this day,) the Prince 



38 CASTLE PALO. 

Makes to the grave a pilgrimage, 

And weeps the tears no time can assuage. 

'' There is another grave, you say, — 
True, — and there, but a year ago. 
Her worn-out body to rest we lay. 
Where the grass is just beginning to grow ; — 
An hour before she died, she smiled 
With a sane sweet smile, her nurses said, 
Like one just awaking from the dead, 
And wliispered, ' Dearest Paolo ; ' 
And after that, she was calm and mild. 
And spoke as if all the years that had passed. 
Since she had loved and seen him last. 
Were but a blank and terrible dream, 
A wall of darkness that shut her from him — 
A night's wild night-mare, that now was fled, — 
And she wondered how she had grown so weak. 
And why she found it so hard to speak. 
And why dear Paolo was not there ; 
So they told her she would see him soon. 



CASTLE PALO. 37 

And she turned her o'er, with a placid air, 
And shd into death, in a painless swoon. 

" But look ! the evening air grows damp. 
And the dark mists creep along the swamp. 
And the bat is flitting to and fro, 
And the Prince, there, beckons me — I must go.'' 

EoME, Nov. 1853. 



THE THREE SINGERS. 

'' Where is a singer to cheer me ? 
My heart is weary with sadness, 
I long for a verse of gladness ! " 

Thus cried the Shah to his Vizier. 

He sat on his couch of crimson, 

And silent he smoked, and waited. 
Till a youth, with face elated. 

Entered, and bent before him. 

He swung the harp from his shoulder, 
And ran o'er its strings, preluding. 
O'er his thought foi* a moment brooding. 

Then his song went up into sunshine. 



THE THREE SINGERS. 39 

It leaped, like the- fountain, breaking 

At the top of its aspiration. 

It fell from its culmination, 
In tears, to life's troubled level. 

He sang of the boundless future, 

That had the gates of the morning, 
His fancies the song adorning, 

Like pearls on a white-necked maiden. 

" My hope, like a hungered lion," 

He sang, " for its prey is panting ; 
Oh ! what is so glad, so enchanting. 

As Manhood, and Fame, and Freedom. 

" To youth there is nothing given, 

The fruit on the high palm groweth, 
And thither hfe's caravan goeth. 

For rest and dehght in its shadow." 



40 THE THREE SINGERS. 

He ceased, — and the Shah, half smiUiig, 
Beckoned, and said, " Stay near me, 
Your song hath a charm to cheer me 

Ask ! what you ask shall be given. 



" Now bring me that other singer. 
That ere I was born, enchanted 
The world with a song undaunted !" 

They went, — and an old man entered. 



His forehead, beneath his turban. 

Was wrinkled, — he entered slowly, — 
Bending — and bending more lowly. 

Waited, — the Shah commanded — 

" Sing me a song ; " his fingers 

Over the light strings trembled, 

And the sound of the strings resembled 

The wind, in the cypresses grieving. 



THE THREE SINGERS. 41 

He sang of the time departed, 

In his song, as in some calm river, 
Where temples and palm-trees quiver, 

But pass not — his youth was imaged. 

" Our shadow, that lay behind us, 

Ere the noonday sun passed o'er us, 
Now darkens the path before us. 

As we walk away from our mormng. 

" Oh ! where are the friends that beside us 
Walked in the garden of roses ; 
The dear head no longer reposes 

On the bosom, to feel the heart's beating. 

" Oh, Life ! 'tis a verse so crooked. 
On Fate's sharp scimitar written. 
And Joy — a pomegranate bitten 

By a worm that preys at its centre.'^ 



42 THE THREE SINGERS. 

He ceased, and the harp's vibration 

Throbbed only, — a slow tear twinkled 
On the rim of those eyes, so wrinkled, 

And the fountain renewed its plashing. 

The Shah was silent — a dimness 

Clouded his eyes — from his finger 
He drew a great ruby — the singer 

Bowed low at this token of honor. 

At last, from his musing arousing, 

He spoke, " Is there none you can bring me 
The praise of the present to sing me, 

Seek him — and bring him before me." 

He waited — the morning — the noonday 
Passed — at last, when the shadows 
Lengthened on gardens and meadows, 

A poor, maimed cripple, they brought him. 



THE THREE SINGERS. 43 

" What ! you sing the praise of the Present ; 
You, by Fortune and Fate so forsaken, 
\ATiat charms can the Present awaken ? " 

'' I love, and am loved," was the answer. 



IN THE WEST. 

The minster clock has struck for ten, 
The streets are free from maids and men, 

The hour has come, and where --are you? 

The hghts that in the chambers shone. 
Have slowly vanished, one by one ; 

But one still shines, and there — are you ! 

Put out your light, and come, my love ! 
The wind sighs in the leaves above. 

And I beneath them sigh — for you ! 

The little brook talks all alone. 
Unto the long, flat, mossy stone. 

Where silently I wait — for you ! 



IN THE WEST. 45 

I see the swiftly sliding star, 
I hear the watch-clog bark afar, 

While, longing here, I wait — for you. 

Was that a step upon the grass ? 
No ! 'twas the wind-stirred leaves — alas ! 
Dear love, I wait, I wait — for you. 

Oh, haste ! the night is going by. 
The streets are still, and not an eye 

Is watching, love, but mine, — for you! 



IN THE EAST. 

Drop a rosebud from the grating, 

Just at twilight, love. 
Underneath I shall be waiting, 

And will glance above ; 
If you hear a whistle answer. 

All below is right, 
Drop into my arms, we'll vanish 

Far into the night. 

At the gate, the slaves are ready 

With the palanquui — 
Ah ! my heart is so unsteady, 

Till our flight begin — 
Through the level tombs we'll hurry, 

Leaving death beliind. 
And in Shiraz' morning splendor, 

Love and Life we'll find. 



THE LESSON OF 
MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 

"Now, certainly, he was a fayre prelat."— Chauceu. 

Let us walk up this alley, in the shade 

Of the green ilexes, whose boughs have made 

An arching gallery of cool privacy. 

The garden's hot — the sun has got so liigh 

It burns into our faces o'er the wall 

Of our clipped hedges, and begins to fall 

So fierce on the white pebbles of the walk. 

Its glare is painful — We shall better talk 

Beneath the ilexes, — where it is cool. 

Well, as I said, Phihppo, you must school 
Your temper, must not speak so harsh and quick 
Men are not driven, ox-like, with a stick. 
Nor goaded to compliance with our will ; 



48 MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 

They must be humored, flattered — seeming still 
To yield to them, with humble air admit 
Their power of argument, their sense, their wit, — 
But, if you might suggest, that so and so, 
Perhaps, would make a difference, although 
You would not place at all your casual thought 
Against their better judgment . . . Men are caught 
By springes like to these — they can be tricked 
Always, by some decoy,- — to contradict 
Is simply stupid — and the dogmatist 
Makes one, half ready to agree, resist. 

I cannot bear that sharp decisive way 

With which you speak — you think so — but why 

. say. 
Though true, exactly what you think or feel ; 
Who plays his cards well, must and should conceal 
His hand from his antagonist, — and all 
Are our antagonists in life — A brawl 
Is a fool's madness — but, no less a fool 
Is he who knows not how his tongue to school. 



MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 49 

So as to seem, at least, to give assent 

Unto the wit, if not the argument. 

Silence is golden — always seek to know 

The other's thoughts and ^dews before you show 

Your own — you then have ground whereon to 

act. 
Not blindly, but with wisdom's weapon, tact 
There is no use to he — oh, that indeed. 
In the long run is sui-e not to succeed ; 
Lying is gross — yet, I am bound to say, 
That truth sometimes may lead us most astra 
When rightly used it is the best of charms. 
When wrongly, the most dangerous of arms, — 
Not for all time and place — for instance, you 
Foil your o^vn aims, sometimes, by being true 
To your quick impulse ; — where 's the use to 

speak 
The truth, when speaking it will make you weak ? 
Wait for occasion — oft with a false key 
We take the stronghold of the enemy. 
Which, if we ventured rashly to attack, 
4 



d 



50 MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 

With angry force would rise to beat us back ; 
Let your mind run before your tongue, — a man 
"Who has a tongue should also have a plan. 

You are too honest, dear Philippe — trust 
The Avorld too freely ; you are young, and must 
Curb those warm impulses that from your heart 
Start wild, and train them down by thought and 

art ; 
Must learn your daring spirit to repress ; 
Submit to rule and law, and question less. 
You claim your single right of thought, deny 
The Church its dogma and authority. 
Cry, " Truth is hving, absolutely needs 
Freedom, and only petrifies in creeds ; " — 
But truth is not a veering vane, that goes 
A different way with every wind that blows, 
A mere kaleidoscopic glass, that takes 
New hues, new figures, with each hand that shakes. 
No ! but a fountain once to man unsealed, 
Whose living waters God himself revealed 



MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 51 

Unto the Church, — whose forms, like vases, give 
But shape to the pure waters they receive. 

You "think," — well, would you with your single 

thought 
Reverse what all the Fathers wise have taught, 
After long centuries' thinking, and confront 
Your eager judgment to the opposing brunt 
Of their slow wisdom? — Dear Philippe, see 
How we have thriven on our pohcy, 
We work together, not for separate pelf, 
As you would act, you only for yourself, 
But to exalt the Church — the Church! — is not 
That thought alone worth every other thought? 
And you have talents that might raise you high, 
Will raise you, if you will not so defy 
Those wise injunctions we must all obey, 
Hard though it seem at first to all. Pray, pray 
For more humility. Some future day, 
When from that brow its curls are worn away, 
The scarlet cap its baldness shall conceal. 



52 MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 

The triple crown, perhaps — nay ! naj ! you feel, 
I know, at present, as all young men do 
To whom the world and thought itself is new. 
You rather choose for " Liberty and Truth," 
For so you name the Folly we call Youth, 
Than wed obedience, crush that fierce will down. 
And hold Rome's keys, and wear the triple crown. 

Well, 'tis a grand ambition — Liberty, 

If it weve possible — yet, trust to me, 

It is not possible ; — obedience — law — 

Self-abnegation — these alone can draw 

The whole world after them. Where all agree. 

Work with one will, one hope, one energy. 

Blindly obedient, nothing can resist ; but wiiat 

Is Liberty but anarchy of thought, — 

Each separate will of that great swarming mass 

You call the people, struggling to surpass 

All other wills, and in blind ignorance 

Wanting — yet never knowing what it wants. 

The beasts alone are free, in your -grand sense ; 



MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 06 

But man^s true freedom is obedience, 

Where all wills bend unto a settled law, 

A single purpose, and together draw 

For some high object — Ah! your liberty, 

Philippo dear, is but a troubled sea. 

Vexed mth w^ild currents, lashed by frequent gales, 

Wliere the best ship must down with masts and sails, 

Fhng its rich cargo to the engulfing waves, 

And creep at last to port, with what it saves. 

Besides ! what gain the nations that are free ? 
Rest, joy, content ? — No, everywhere you see 
The freest people the unhappiest ; 
Full of desires that goad them from their rest, 
They crowd, and push, and fight, and end at last 
In anarchy and luxury ; — all the past 
Tells the same story — all the future will — 
Only the Church abides through good and ill. 

Compare with this the peaceful, studious life. 
Leading so softly, undisturbed by strife, 



54 MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 

To power, for great, good ends, that here we find 
In the still cloisters of the Church, — the mind 
Here stores its thought, here trains its highest 

powers 
To highest purposes ; — these hves of ours 
Fit us to move the world, and with the skill 
Of subtle thought subdue unto our will 
Its mighty strength. The world — the great brute 

world, 
That bends against us its flat bull-front, curled 
With strength, and bellows., and its great horns 

shakes, 
Blind with the dust, deaf with the noise it makes. 
Is game that we with easy skill control. 
Sure of our power, and, as we will, cajole. 
Shaking the scarlet that it hates, and thus 
Letting it butt a rag instead of us, — 
Always secure when we would end the play. 
With our fine rapier point to find the way. 
You have ambition, — have it then to rule 
This world — to make the beast your game, your tool, 



MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 55 

To ring his nose, and train him to your hand, — 
For objects high, of course, we understand. 

Love ! 'tis a child's disease, that passes soon. 

Like mumps or measles — 'tis a little tune 

We play upon a pipe when we are young, — 

A honey bee, by which we're often stung 

As soon as we have caught it, — nay, to speak 

In serious phrase, Phihppo, it were weak 

To throw away a life's great hopes for love ; 

I know these hot desires will sometimes prove 

Too strong for us — the Church takes note of that. 

And covers mth its veil of silence what 

It knows weak man -will have. It shuts its eyes 

To human nature's frail necessities. 

If it be done in seemly secrecy. 

And without scandal, shall we peep to see 

Our brother's weakness ? Therefore, do not doubt, 

If you be careful, you may still play out 

The httle role of love — for it were wise 

That we should take man in his actual guise ; 



56 MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 

The self-same rule will not apply to men 

As to pure angels without sin — what then ? 

The Church does all it can. These passions. 

too, 
Are not without their use, if we subdue 
Their exercise to proper ends, — and see, 
They give us oftentimes a secret key 
To help great projects on. So, as I said. 
Love is not thoroughly prohibited,. 
Unless it lead to scandal. But, suppose 
You will have marriage ; then, indeed, you close 
The Church's door, and for a whim, to last 
A month or so, your future life you blast. 
Take my advice, — • drain nothing to its lees, 
Only a tasted pleasure long can please ; 
What we desire is grateful while desired. 
Possessed, 'tis worthless — Ah! we soon grow 

tired, 
With the continuous every-day of what 
Once seemed so charming, when we had it not ; 
And wives, Philippe, wives are . . . 



MONSIGNORE GALEOTTO. 57 

Hark ! 'twas noon, 
The clock struck then — Per Bacco, ho j,\iovi snon 
This hour has passed — and I shall be too late 
For the Marchesa — otherwise I'd wait — 
She has some scheme, I tlmik of charity, 
On which she wishes to consult with me. 
Addlo, then — and think on what I've said, — 
The heart must be submissive to the head. 

May, 1855. 



ON THE DESERT. 

All around, 

To the bound 

Of the vast horizon's round, 

All sand, sand, sand — 

All burning, glaring sand — 

On my camel's hump I ride. 
As he sways from side to side. 
With an awkward step of pride, 

And his scraggy head uplifted, and his eye 
so long and bland. 

Naught is near. 

In the blear 

And simmering atmosphere. 
But the shadow on the sand. 
The shadow of the camel on the sand ; 



ON THE DESERT. 59 

All alone, as I ride, 
O'er the desert's ocean mde. 
It is ever at my side ; 
It haunts me, it pursues me, if I flee, or if 
I stand. 

Not a sound. 

All around. 

Save the padded beat and boimd 
Of the camel on the sand. 
Of the feet of the camel on the sand. 

Not a bird is in the air, 

Though the smi, T^dth burning stare, 

Is prying everywhere. 
O'er the yellow thirsty desert, so desolately 
grand. 

Not a breath 
Stirs the death 

Of the desert, — nor a wreath 
Curls upward from the sand, 



60 ON THE DESERT. 

From the Avaves of loose, fine sand — 
And I doze, half asleep, 
Of the wild Sirocs that sweep 
O'er the caravans, and heap 

With a cloud of powdery, dusty death, the 
terror-stricken band. 

Their groans 

And their moans 

Have departed, — but their bones 
Are whitening on the sand — 
Are blanching and grinning on the sand, — 

Oh, Allah ! thou art great ! 

Save me from such a fate, 
• Nor through that fearful strait 
Lead me, thy basest servant, unto the 
Prophet-land. 



THE BEGGAR. 

I AM but a beggar, 

A wretch and an outcast ; 

No health in my body, 

No joy in my spirit ; 

Despised and neglected, 

Lame, crooked, and wretched, 

I crawl at thy gateway 

To wait for thy coming. 

For I love thee, my glory, 
My life, my beloved! 

I wait for thy coming 
All night at thy portals. 
In my rags I await thee, 
In sorrow and longing. 
I watch the lidits sinning 



62 THE BEGGAR. 

And moving above me, 

And my heart goes up to thee 

In loving and longing, 

For I love thee, my gladness, 
My hope, my beloved ! 

I wait till thy portals 
Swing wide in the morning, 
And thou with thy splendors 
Before us appearest. 
Desiring, yet fearing. 
The sword of thy glances ; 
For how shall the outcast 
Dare gaze at thy glory ; 

Yet I love thee, my gladness. 
My Hfe, my beloved ! 

What have I to give thee 
That thou shouldst accept me ? 
How dare I to hope, then, 
That thou wilt not spurn me ? 



THE BEGGAR. 63 

No goodness — no beauty 
Is mine — and no riches, 
But a human heart only 
That praises and trembles ; 

For I love thee, my gladness. 

My life, my salvation ! 

AVith the wretched I wander. 
My life is uncleanly, 
I yield to temptation, 
And drink at the tavern ; 
Yet in the still foot-paths 
Of thought I adore thee. 
In the filth of my vices 
I kneel down to praise thee ; * 

For I love thee, my gladness, 

My hfe, my salvation ! 

Each law of thy kingdom 
I've wilfully broken ; 
Without, I am filthy, 



(34 THE BEGGAR. 

Within, I am beastly ; , 

I ask not for justice, 

For that would destroy me ; 

I cry for forgiveness. 

Oh ! save and forgive me ; 

For I love thee, and fear thee. 
My life, my salvation ! 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 

Forgive me, Father ! Those were wild, bad words, 
From the foul bottom of my heart stirred up 
By agitation. — Turn not thus away, 
I wiU repent — I think I do repent, — 
Yet who can answer, when temptation comes. 
For calm resolves. When windy passion swells 
The turbulent thoughts, our weakly-builded dykes 
Burst, and the overbearing sea, let through. 
In one wild rush pours in, and swirls away 
Our boasted resolutions, like light chips. 

Yet, holy Father ! give me now your hand, 
And I will try to think of youth and home, 
And violets in spruig, and all sweet things 
I used to love, when I was innocent, 
5 



QQ THE CONFESSIONAL. 

For they may calm me — Yet, no ! no ! 'tis vain ! 
The great black wall of yesterday shuts out 
All other yesterdays that went before ; 
I cannot overpeer its horror and look down 
Into the peaceful garden-plot beyond. 

I was not all to blame. You, who have heard 
So many tales of passion, lean your ear. 
And I will tell you mine — but make the sign. 
The blessed sign of the cross, ere I begin. 

'Twas twihght — and the early lighted lamps 
Were flickering down into the Arno's tide 
While yet the daylight Imgered in the skies. 
Silvering and pahng — when I saw him first. 
I was returning from my work, and paused 
Upon the Bridge of Santa Trinita, 
To rest, and think how fair our Florence is. 
How sweet the air smelt after that close room. 
And how privation, like a darkened tube. 
Made joy the sweeter, through its darkness seen. 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 67 

• And I remember, o'er the hazy hills 
Far, far away, how exquisitely fair 
The twilight seemed that night — my heai*t was 
soft 
^With tender longings, misted with a dim 
\ Sad pleasure — as a mirror with the breath — 
QAh ! never will those feehngs come again.) 
I wondered if the thronging crowd that passed. 
Felt half the wondrous beauty of the hour ; 
And I was in a mood to take a stamp 
From any passing chance, — even hke those clouds 
That caught the tenderest thrill of dying light, — 
When by some inward sense, I know not what, 
I felt that I was gazed at, drawn away 
By eyes that had a strange magnetic will. 
And so I turned from those far hills to see 
A stranger ; — no ! even then he did not seem 
A stranger — but as one I once had known. 
Not here in Florence, not in any place. 
But somehow in my spirit known and seen, 
Elsewhere, I know not where, perhaps in dreams ; 



68 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

I felt his eyes were staying upon me, 
And a sweet, serious smile was on his mouth. 
Nor could I help but look and smile again. 
I know not what it was went to and fro 
Between us then, in that swift smile and glance ; 
But something went that thrilled me through and 

through, 
And fluttered all my thoughts, as when a bird 
Shivers with both his wings some peaceful pool : 
We neither spoke — but that quick clash of souls 
Had struck a spark that set me all a-fire. 

With what a turbulent' heart I traversed then 
The Bridge, and plunged into the narrow streets. 
Heavy with shadows, till I gained my room ; 
Yet there I could not rest — I leaned from out 
My balcony above the street and gazed 
At every passer-by, the evening long. 
Till midnight struck, and all the hummmg crowd 
Poured home from theatre and opera, — 
In hopes to see him. Silent grew the streets. 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 69 

Save here and there, where rang the echoing feet 
Of some late walker singing as he went. i 

The few lamps on the lonely pavement glared, 
The still stars stood in the dark river of nigrht. 
That flowed between the house-tops far above, 
And all was rest. — At last I lit my lamp. 
And with a prayer, (I never prayed till then. 
It seemed to me — so fervently I prayed,) 
Crept to my bed. Half dreaming, I rehearsed 
The evening scene — and saw again his smile - — 
And wondered who he was — and if agaui 
We ere should meet — and what would come of it — 
Until at last I wore away to sleep, 
Almost when morning was upon the hills. 

And days went by — and 1;hat one thought of 

him 
Ran through thought's labyrinth, like a silver 

clue. 
Waking, I did not see my work ; I sewed 
Loves broidery in with every stitch I made ; 



70 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

And I grew silent, sad, and spiritless. 

And ceased to talk and jest as I was wont, 

Until Beata laughed at me, and said. 

Pointing me out to all the other girls, 

" Santa Maria ! Nina is in love ! " 

And all of them looked up at me and laughed ; 

I could have struck her — but I had to laugh. 

At last the Festa of the Madonna came. 
And in the costume of my native town, 
(I am an Albanese, as you know,) 
I, and Beata, and the other girls. 
Went to the Duomo, as we always do. 
To see the grand procession and hear mass ; 
And there, I kneeling prayed for him and me. 
I heard the laboring organ in the dome 
Struggle and groan, and stopping short, give place 
Unto the Bishop's harsh and croaking chant ; 
I heard, at intervals, the crowd's reponse 
Rising around me with a muffled roar. 
The steaming censer clicking as it swung. 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 



The sharp, quick tmkle of the bell ; at last 
The whole crowd rustluig sank upon its knees, 
And silence reimed — the host was raised — a 



«3 

strain 



Of trumpets sounded — and the mass was o'er ; 
Mj heart was full — I lingered when they went, 
Beata, Maddalena, Bice, all. 
And leaned against a pillar in the choir, 
"Where Michael Angelo's half-finished group 
Stands in the shadow — I, in shadow too — 
How long I stood I know not, but a voice 
That made my blood stop, whispered me at last. 
I knew that it was he. Wiat could I do ? 
He knew I loved him — and I knew he loved. 
He said to me . . . . Ah ! no, I cannot say 
What words he said, to me they were not words ; 
But ere we parted it was late at night. 
And I was happy, — oh, so happy then, — 
It seemed as if this earth could never add 
One little drop more to the joy I owned, 



72 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

For all tliat passionate torrent pent within 

Mj heart had found its utterance and response. 

He was Venetian, and that radiant hair 
We black-haired girls so covet, haloed round 
His sunny northern face and soft blue eyes. 
I know not why he loved me — me so black, 
With this black skin, that every Roman has. 
And these black eyes, black hair, that I so hate. 
Wliy loved he not Beata? — she is fair. — 
But yet he often took these cheeks of mine 
Between his hands, and looking in my eyes. 
Swore that Beata's body was not worth 
One half my finger — and then kissed me full 
Upon the mouth as if to seal liis oath. 
Ah ! glorious seal — I feel those lips there now ! 
And on my forehead, too, one kiss still glows 
Like a great star — look here — it was the day 
He hung this Httle cross upon my neck. 
And pressed his lips, here, just above the eyes. 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 73 

Ah, well ! those days are gone. No ! No ! 
No ! No ! 
They are not gone ; — I love him madly now, 
I love him madly as I loved him then ; 
And I again would .... No ! I will be cahn — 
Just place your hand upon my forehead here. 
It soothes me — I will try to be more calm. 

I gave him all — heart, soul and body — all — 
Even the- great hope of another world 
I would have given for one wish of his ; 
With liim this hfe was all I asked to have — 
'Twas Paradise — what more or better then 
Was there to hope for ? — without Mm the best 
Was only hell — is only hell to me. 

Ah, God ! how blissfully those days went by ; 
You could not heap a golden cup more full 
Of rubied wine than was my heart with joy. 
Long mornings in his studio there I sat 
And heard his voice — or, when he did not speak 



74 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

I felt his presence, like a rich perfume, 

Pill all mj thoughts. At times he'd rise and 

come 
And sit beside me, take my hands in his, 
And call me best and dearest — heaping names 
Of love upon me — till beneath their weight 
I bent, and clung unto his neck, and wept ; 
Oh ! what glad tears, he kissed them all away. 

I was his model — hours and hours I posed 
For liim to paint his Cleopatra — fierce. 
With her squared brows, and full Egyptian lips, 
A great gold serpent on her rounded arm, 
('Twas mine, look now how lean and bony 'tis,) 
And a broad band of gold around her head ; 
And oft he'd say, ' I am your Antony, 
Keady to fling the world away for you ; 
But you, if I should fall upon my sword. 
You'd hve for Csesar's triumph — would you not ? ' 
And I, a little vexed, although I knew 
He did not mean his words, would laugh and say, 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 75 

' For all yom* boast, you men are all the same, 
You would not risk a kingdom for your love, 
You'd marry weak Octavia — all of you.' 

Had I not reason ? Yet those foohsh words. 
They burn here in my memory, Hke red drops 
Of molten brass — those httle foohsh jests 
Were eggs of serpents that now hiss and sting ; 
I curse my tongue that spoke them — for he loves, 
I know he loves me — loves me now as then. 

What a long trail of flushed and orient hght 
Those summer days were ! but the autumn came. 
The stricken, bleeding, autumn came at last. 
I saw him grow more serious, day by day, 
More fitful, sudden, gusty — something weighed 
Upon his mind I could not understand — 
I sought to win his secret — but in vain. 
' 'Tis nothing love,' he'd say — Then rising quick. 
With sudden push would dash away his hair 
From his grand forehead — to the window go. 



76 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

And Avith his back turned to me, stand and stare 

For full five minutes in the garden there. 

I knew all was not right, yet dared not ask. 

I waited as we women have to wait. 

At last 'twas clear, — two words made all things 

clear — 
' Love, I must go to Venice.' ' Must ? ' ' Yes, 

must ! ' 

' Then I go too.' ' No ! no ! ah ! Nina, no — 

* 
Four weeks pass swiftly — one short month, and 

then 

I shall return to Florence, and to you.' 

Vain were my words, he went — alas, he went 
With all the sunshine — and I wore alone 
The weary weeks out of that hateful month. 
Another month I waited, nervous, fierce 
With love's impatience — thinking every day 
I heard his voice and step upon the stair, 
And listening to the carriages all night. 
And straimng each back as it passed the house, — 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 77 

With fits of weeping when it rolled away 

In the lone midnight. — "VYhen that month w^as gone 

My heart was all a-fire — I could not stay, 

Consumed with jealous fears that wore me do^^-n 

Into a fever — Necklace, earrings, all, 

I sold — and on to Venice rushed. How long 

That dreary never-ending journey seemed I 

I cursed the hills, up which we slowly dragged, 

The long flat plains of Lombardy I cursed. 

With files of poplars stretching out and out. 

That kept me back from Venice — but at last 

In a* Mack gondola I swam along 

The sea-built city, and my heart was big 

With the glad thought that I was near to him. 

Yes ! gladness came upon me that soft night. 

And jealousy was hushed, and hope led on 

My dancing heart. One httle half-hour more 

And I should be again mthin his arms ; 

And how he'd be surprised to see me he^. 

And laugh at me. In vain I strove to curb 

My glad impatience, — I must sec liim then. 



78 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

At once, that very night — I could not wait 

The tardy morning — 'twas a year away. — 

I only gave the gondolier his name, 

And said, ' you know him ? ' ' Yes.' ' Then row 

me quick 
To where he is.' He bowed, and on we went 
Threading along the grand canal so swift 
The oar sprang to the pressure of his arm ; 
And as we swept along, I leaned me out 
And dragged my burning fingers in the wave, 
My hurried heart forecasting to itself 
Our meeting — what he'd say, and do, and think. 
How I should hang upon his neck, and say, 
' I could not longer live mthout you, dear.' — 
In thought like this, I had no heart to hst 
The idle babbling of a gondoher; 
I bade him not to talk, but row — row — row ! 

At last he paused, stretched out his hand, and 
said, 
^ There is the palace.' I was struck aghast — 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 79 

It flared with lights that from the windows 

streamed 
And trickled down into the black canal — 
Faint bursts of music swelled from out the 

doors — 
A swarm of gondolas close huddling thronged 
Around the oozj steps. ' Stop ! stop ! ' I cried, 
For a wild doubt rushed swiftly through my 

mind, 
That scared me — like a strange noise in a 

wood 
A traveller hears at night, — ' 'Tis some mistake ; 
Why are these lights ? This palace is not his, 
He owns no palace.' ' Pardon,' answered he, 
' I fancied the Signora wished to see 
The marriage festa — and all Venice knows 
The bride receives to-night.' ' What bride, whose 

bride,' 
I snapped, impatient. ' Count Alberti's bride, 
\Vliose else ? ' he answered mth >^ shrug. My 

heart 



80 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

From its glad singing height dropped like a 

lark 
Shot dead, at those few words. The whole world 

reeled, 
And for a moment I was stunned and crushed ; 
Then came the wild revulsion of despair ; 
Then calm more dreadful than the fiercest pain. 
' Row to the steps,' I said. He rowed. I leaped 
On their wet edge, and stared in at the door, 
Where all was hurry, hum, and buzz, and light. 
I was so calm — I never was so calm 
As then, despairing. Yet one little jet 
Of hope was stirring in that stagnant marsh — 
That little jet was all that troubled me — 
My eyes ran lightening zigzag through the crowd 
In search of him — he was not there — Ah, God ! 
I breathed, — he was not there — I inly cursed 
My unbelief, and turned me round to go — 
There was a sudden murmur near the door. 
And I beheld him walking at her side. 
Oh! cursed be the hour I saw that sight, 



THE CONFESSIOXAL. 81 

And cursed be the place ! — I saw those eyes 
That used to look such passion into mine, 
Turned with the self-same look to other eyes 
That upward gazed at his — yes, light blue 

eyes. 
Just like Beata's — hers were light blue eyes I — 
I saw her smiling — saw him smiling too. 
As they advanced — I could not bear her bliss ; 
My heart stood still, and all the hurrying crowd 
Seemed spectral, nothing lived but those two 

forms ; 
The Past all broke to pieces with a crash 
That stunned me, shattering every power of 

thought : 
I scarcely know what happened then — I know 
I felt for the stiletto in my vest. 
With purpose that was half mechanical, 
As if a demon used my hand for his, 
I heard the red l^lood singing in my brain, 
I struck — before me at my feet she fell. 
6 



82 THE CONFESSIONAL. 

" Who was the queen then ? Ah ! your rank 
and wealth, 
Your pearls and splendors, what did they avail 
Against the sharp stiletto's httle pomt ? 
You should have thought of that before you 

dared — 
You, who had all the world beside — to steal 
The only treasure that the Roman girl, 
The poor despised black peasant ever had ; 
You will not smile again, as then you smiled, — 
Thank God ! you '11 never smile again for him. 
And I alone of all the crowd stood calm ; 
I was avenged — avenged until I saw 
The dreadful look he gave me as he turned 
From her dead face and looked in mine — Ah, 

God! 
It haunts me, scares me, will not let me sleep. 

" When will he come, and tell me he forgives 
# And loves me still ? Oh, Father ! bid him come, 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 83 

Come quickly — come and let me die in peace. 
Tell him I could not help it, I was mad, 
But I repent, I suffer, — he at least 
Should pity and forgive. Oh ! make him come 
And say he loves me, and then let me die. 
I shall be ready then to die — but now 
I cannot think of God ; my heart is hell, 
Is hell, until I know he loves me still. 

Jan. 1855. 



AN ESTRANGEMENT. 

How is it ? it seems so strange ; 

Only a month ago 
And we were such friends ; now there 's 
change ; 

Why, I scarcely know ; 
I thought we were friends enough to say, 
" We differ in this or the other way. 

What matter ? " It was not so. 

I know not the how or why, 

I only feel the fact ; 
Something hath happened to set us awry. 

Something is sadly lacked, — 
Something that used to be before, — 
It seems to be nothing, I feel it the more : 

Our vase is not broken, but cracked. 



AN ESTRANGEMENT. 85 

Friends ? Oh, yes, we are friends ; 

The words we saj are the same, 
But there is not the something that lends 

The grace, though it has no name. 
When others are with us we feel it less ; 
A\nien alone, there 's a sort of irksomeness. 

And nobody to blame. 

I msh I could say, " dear friend. 

Tell me, what have I done ? 
Forgive me ; let it be now at an end." 

But ah ! we scarcely own 
That aught has happened — or something so slight 
'Tis ghosthke, it will not bear the light, — 

'Tis only a change of tone. . 

Suppose I should venture to say : 
" Something, — oh ! tell me what — 

Troubles the heart's free play 
That once existed not." 

All would be worse ; — we must turn our back ; 



86 AN ESTRANGEMENT. 

Pretend not to see that there is a crack 
In our vase, on our love a blot. 

Once were it openly said, 

It would strike us more apart, 

Each, alas ! would know that there laid 
A stone at the other's heart. 

But now we carry it each alone. 

So we must hope to live it down. 
Each one playing his part. 

It is not that I express 

Less, but a little more, 
A little more accent, a little more stress. 

Which was not needed before. 
Ah ! would I could feel entirely sure 
That it was not so — I should be truer. 

If you were just as of yore. 

But I cannot give you up. 
Ah ! no, I am all to blame ; 



AN ESTRANGEMENT. 87 

You were so Idnd, you filled my cup 

With love, — and mine is the shame ; 
'Twas some stupid, foolish word I said 
Unwitting, I know, that must have bred 
This something without a name. 

Was it not all a mistake ? 

Oh ! porcelain friendship so thin, 
It is so apt, so apt to break 

And let out the wme from within ; 
But once it is mjured the least, alack ! 
"What hand so skilful to mend the crack, 

And make it all whole again. 



IN ST. PE TER'S: 
THE CONVERT TALKS TO HIS FRIEND. 

A NOBLE structure trulj ! as you say, — 
Clear, spacious, large in feeling and design. 
Just what a church should be — ^ I grant alway 
There may be faults, great faults, yet I opine 
Less on the whole than elsewhere may be found. 
But let its faults go — out of human thought 
Was nothing ever builded, written, wrought, 
That one can say is whole, complete, and round ; 
Your snarling critic gloats upon defects, 
And any fool among the architects 
Can pick you out a hundred different flaws ; 
But who of them, with all his talking, draws 
A church to match it ? View it as a whole, 
Not part by part, with those mean little eyes. 



89 



That cannot love, but only criticize, 

How grand a body ! with how large a soul ! 

Seen from without, how well it bodies forth 

Home's proud rehgion — nothing mean and small 

In its proportion, and above it all 

A central dome of thought, a forehead bare 

That rises in this soft Italian air 

Big with its intellect, — and far away, 

When lesser domes have sunken in the earth, 

Stands for all Rome uplifted in the day. 

An art-born brother of the mountains there. 

See what an invitation it extends 

To the world's pilgrims, be they foes or friends. 

Its colonnades, with wide embracing arms. 

Spread forth as if to bless and shield from 

harms. 
And draw them to its heart, the inner shrine, 
From the grand outer precincts, where alway 
The living fountains wave their clouds of spray, 
And temper with cool sound the hot sunshine. 



90 IN ST. Peter's. 

Step in — behind your back the curtain swings ; 
The world is left outside with worldly things. 
How still ! save where vague echoes rise and fall, 
Dying along the distance — w^hat a sense 
Of peace and silence hovers over all, 
That tones the marbled aisle's magnificence, 
And frescoed vaults and ceilings deep with gold, 
To its own quiet. — See ! how grand an(J bold. 
Key of the whole, swells up the airy dome 
Where the apostles hold their lofty home. 
And angels hover in the misted height. 
And amber shafts of sunset bridge with fight 
Its quivering air — while low the organ groans. 
And from the choir's gilt cages tangling tones 
Whirl fugueing up, and play and float aloft. 
And in its vast bell die in echoes soft. 

And mark ! our church hath its own atmosphere. 
That varies not with seasons of the year, 
But ever keeps its even temperate air. 
And soft, large light without offensive glare. 



IN ST. Peter's. 91 

No sombre, gothic sadness here abides 
To awe the sense — no sullen shadow hides 
In its clear spaces — but a hght as warm 
And broad as charity smiles o'er the whole, 
And joyous art and color's festal charm 
Refine t)|e senses, and uphft the soul. 

You scom the aid of color, exile art, . 
And with cold dogmas seek to move the heart ; 
But still the heart rebels, for man is wrought 
Of God and clay, of senses as of thought. 
Religion is not logic, — -husks of creeds 
Will never satisfy the spirit's needs. 
Strain up with high theologies the wise. 
But not the less with art's sweet mysteries 
Cling to the common heart of man, content 
To save liim, though it be through sentiment. 
You whip the intellect to heaven mth pain, 
And Beauty with her fair enchanting train 
From out your cold bare church is rudely 
driven ; 



92 



And yet what matters it hoiu heaven we gain 

If at the last w^e really get to heaven ? 

No ! You are wrong ; the end at last must be, 

That the heart, struggling with such sophistry. 

Breaks through the fine-spun w^eb of logic — yearns 

For Love and Beauty, and to u§ returns '^ 

Or worse, it starves to death, and left alone 

The head to godless madness journeys on. 

The strongest wings too sternly strained, must droop, 

Give them a happy earth on which to stoop. 

There is no folly like asceticism 

When preached to all — Religion 's but a prism 

That makes truth blue to this, to that one brown ; 

One hugs his lash, for God to him 's a frown ; 

One would prefer a kindly Devil's hell 

To heaven, if with an angry God to dwell. 

And why should you, in this great world of ours, 

Give God the wheat, and give the Devil flowers? 

Think you that any child w^as ever born, 

Loved not the poppies better than the corn? 



IX ST. Peter's. 93 

And for the most part we are children here, 
That hold our Father's hand, and call him — dear. 

The head is narrow, but the heart is broad, 
And through the senses doors by thousands lead 
To Love's pure temple — and the very God 
Comes through them oftentimes when least we 

heed ; 
Yet, though an angel at their door should come. 
And knock for entrance, both his flushing wings 
Radiant with love's warm hues and colorings, 
You cry, " No entrance here, go back to Rome, 
Devil in angel's shape ! they'll let you in — 
Or, if you be no tempting shape of sin. 
Enter the great door of the intellect, 
That is the only entrance to our sect." 
Think you not God frowns, and the angel weeps, 
Turning away ? Great Nature never creeps 
Into such narrow schemes — where'er she goes 
Flowers laugh before her — from toil's planted 

rows 



94 



The lark springs singing ; DaA\*n for her flings out 
Its glowing curtains ; Day, with festal shout", 
Bursts glorious in, and flares o'er all the east, 
Till Earth shouts back as at a joyous feast ; 
And after twi]i2:ht leaves the clouds' lono; bars 
The cool blue tent of night she sows with stars. 
And hushes all the darkened land to dreams. 
Through which the silver sliding river gleams — 
Her lavish hand for beauty never spares. 
Her singing robes where'er she goes she wears. 
No long-drawn face is hers, morose and sad. 
As your rehgion's is, but sweet and glad. 
Is it to tempt us, then, to death and sin ? 
Ah, no 1 my friend, she only hopes to win 
With thousand shifts these fickle souls of ours. 
Not mth her rods alone, but with her flowers. 

You smile your unbelief; I recognize 
The stern protester in that sad and wise 
And solemn shake of head ; you still prefer 
Your cold bare walls and droning minister ; 



IX ST. Peter's. 95 

You hate the priest (of course you mean not me, 
But the whole system) — well, well, let it be, 
I will not argue that at present, yet 
Some time or other we will talk of it ; 
But this one thing I say, and say agam. 
Great works are born of joy and not of pain — 
The Devil is an isolated brain. 

Why point there to the altar with a sniff 
Of such superior ^drtue, just as if 
Those ceremonial forms the truly wise 
Perceive are tricks, and therefore must despise. 
Dear friend, observe, this service is not made 
For one small chapel, w^here each word that's said 
Might start the furthest sleeper — it appeals. 
Not through the ear, as yours, but through the 

eye; 
Each sign or gesture is a word that tells 
As clear a meaning as your " seventhly." 
Your service in this vast basilica. 
Would it subserve a better purpose — eh? 



96 IN ST. Peter's. 

A violent man in black, a furlong off, 

Screaming, but all unheard, you would not scoff. 

Yet, as you do not know its sense, you think 

Folly like this is quite enough to sink 

The Roman church — these bendings of the knee 

And crossings, look like pure idolatry. 

Believe it not, a form is but a form. 

Not bad or good except as it is warm 

With the heart's blood — the spirit 'tis alone 

That gives the worth to all that's said or done. 

Be reverent, friend ! nor sneer at her who kneels 
In that dim chapel while her beads she feels. 
Up-glancing at the saint that bleeds above. 
What if her creed be false ? one drop of love 
Is worth a thousand creeds. I would not care 
Though she should whisper to her lover there. 
So full of love for him, that oft she prays 
With idle lips- — it is not what she says 
But what she is that saves her — if her heart 
Be from the ritual service all apart, 



IN ST. PETEll'S. 9' 

But lose itself in earnest love for him, 



God is still served — aj ! and perchance the grim 

And sad observance of a loveless task 

You would enforce, he Avould not rather ask. 

But, hist, the sharp bell tinkles — 'tis the Host 
The Pope uplifts — you mil not, friend, be lost, 
Though you should kneel. 

******** 

You could not stand apart, 
I knew you must be stirred — you have a heart. 
Was it not wondrous, when the multitude. 
With a vast murmur, hke a wind-swayed wood, 
Dropped to its knees, and sudden bayonets flashed 
A cold gray gleam, and clanging side-arms clashed 
Upon the pavement, as along the nave 
The helms of guards went down with dropping 

wave 
Of their long horsehair, — and a silence deep 
And full of awe above us seemed to sweep. 
Like some great angel's Aving, 'neath which all hearts 
7 



98 



Were shadowed — till from out tlie silence starts 
A silver strain of trumpets, sweet and clear, 
That soars and grows in the hushed atmosphere, 
And swells along the aisles, and up the height 
Of the deep dome, and dies in dizzy flight 
Among the cherubs — and we know above 
The incarnate Christ is looking down in love — 
And then, when all was over, hke a Aveight 
Too great to bear uplifted from the heart, 
The crowd rose up and rustled all elate — 
Ah, friend ! the soul is touched by all this art — 
But come — the crowd moves — shall we too 
depart ? 



THE ]NECKAN. 

By the shadowy banks of the river, 
That gleamed in the evening hght, 

As the good priest rode, he pondered 
Of Virtue, and Justice, and Right. 

He thought of the fallen spirits 

To whom the gates of grace 
Were closed — who, despite their repentance, 

Should never see God's face. 



And he crossed liis breast and murmured 

An Ave as he rode. 
While he dreamed of a hell for sinners. 

And an unforgiving God. 



100 THE NECKAN. 

When he heard a strange, sweet music, 
From a stringed instrmnent. 

And a gentle voice and plaintive. 
That its sorrow to singing lent. 



And there, in the soft green twilight, 

A youth with curling hair, 
On a rock by the river sat singing 

With a pale dejected air. 

He knew 'twas the spirit Neckan, 
By the elf-locks loosely blown. 

And the golden harp he was playing, 
And the voice's strange, sad tone. 

And a virtuous indignation 

In the good priest's breast was born. 
So he spoke to the poor lost Neckan 

In words of reproof and scorn. 



THE NECKAN. 101 

" Why play you your harp so sweetly ? 

Ah ! wretched child of sin, 
This dead dry staff shall blossom 

Before vou shall enter in 



To the joy of the heavenly kingdom 
That is open for children of God." 

Then with feelings half-mixed of pity, 
He turned him, and onward rode. 

But he stilled the voice of pity, 

Though the Neckan, while he spake, 

His golden harp threw from him. 

And sobbed as his heart would break. 



For our good priest said, " 'Tis Satan 
That tempts me to my loss ; " 

So he muttered an anathema. 
And made the sign of the cross. 



102 THE NECKAN. 

But as on he slowly ambled, 

His head on his breast bent low, 

He started, for on his dead dry staff 
Thick blossoms began to blow. 



And his harsh words he remembered, 
And felt, with a painful start, 

'Twas God, by the emblem rebuking 
His bigoted pride of heart. 

So back to the river he hurried. 

Where the Neckan sat weeping sore, 

And hfting his staff" of blossoms 

He cried to him, " Weep no more ! 

" Oh ! weep no more, dear Neckan ! 

For behold ! if this staff" so dry 
Can bourgeon in leaves and blossoms. 

Can a spirit ever die ? 



THE XECKAX. lOB 

" And God, by sucli emblem, teaches 
To the soul benighted m sm, 
That the Postern gate of Repentance 
Is open to all to come in ; 

" To all that desire to enter, 
How sunken soe'er they be. 
And the arms of God are open 
To thee as well as to me. 



" For Justice is twinned with Mercy, — 

Their two wings spread abroad ^ 

Balance the highest angels 

That live in the smile of God." 

Then broke through the tears of the Neckan. 

A glad sweet smile of light. 
And lifting his harp he played it 

And sang through the hvelong night. 



THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. 

xIntonio ! — Gaetano ! — Ho ! I say — 
Where are ye all? — must I lie here and die — 
Die all alone, without a creature near ? 
I faint with pulling at the bell-rope so. 
Help, Gaetano ! help ! — he will not come ; 
None, none will come to help a poor old man, — 
A#\vretched man that starves to death with 

thirst. 
Still, I am Pope ! I am thy Vicar, God ! 
And in thy holy name I curse them all ! 
Now let them die beneath the church's ban. 
Die, and their souls unsaved hiss down to hell. 
Oh ! is there none on whom IVe heaped my 

wealth 
AVill stay beside my bed, and wipe the sweat 



THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. 105 

From off my brow, and reach to me a drop 

Of something, any thmg, to cool my mouth ? — 

There is the distant echo of their feet, 

The slam of far-off doors beyond the hall — 

What do they there ? Oh, for an hour of strength 

In these old legs, — but no! I cannot stir, 

While they, the \dllains, ransack all my vaults; 

I almost hear them smash the rusted necks 

Of cobwebbed bottles filled with rich thick wine. 

And swill and laugh, while I burn up with 

tliirst ; 
Yes, burn like Dives with tliis hellish thirst — 
Give me a drop, I say, of my own wine ! '^ 

Am I the Pope ? why, then, I say come here 
You brutes, you beasts, that I so oft have blest. 
There's not a peasant that with garlic reeks 
And in liis foul capamia shakes and burns 
With fever, but is better off than I ! 
He has some friend to reach to his hot lips 
At least ditch-water, but I, — I the Pope, 



106 THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. 

Beneath my gold-embroidered canopy, 

I . . . curse you, beasts and villains that you are ! 

Hark ! there's a step — Gaetano ! — Guard ! — 
Holla ! 
Help ! help ! come in, whoever you may be ! 
Come in, I say — no matter for the rules — 
Where is the bell — the bell! So, he's gone too! 

I'm not so very old but I might hve. 
Others have lived to greater age than this ; 
Oh ! let me live a few short years at least. 
Or b^t a year, a little year, oh, God 1 
I have not finished all your work, you know, 
And — let me give these villains their reward. 
It almost makes me happy, when I think 
Were I once well, what I Avould do. for them ; 
What lodgings they should have ! I 'd palace them 
In some sweet dungeon where the pleasant walls 
Should swarm with vermin, drip with oozy mould 
And crawl with unimamnable things. 



THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. lOT 

I'd give them dainty fare of mouldy crusts 
And fetid water for their luscious drink, 
So they should know how sweet it is to lie 
The long, black nights, and starve and die like 
dogs. 

And they, their masters, that have bowed and 

cringed. 
Now, while I starve, are marching to and fro 
In purple and lace, through Hghted palaces 
And pursing up their mouths to flatteries 
In hopes to get my seat. Oh ! let mc live. 
If but to cheat these Cardinals of mine ; ^ 

I say I will not yield my seat to them. 
Hark ! there — that carriage jarring up the 

court. 
That 's one of them to ask if I am dead ! 
No ! no, your Eminence, I 'm not yet dead, 
Not dead, thank Heaven ! I '11 hve to plague you 

yet! 
There — blessings on you — roll away again ! 



108 THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. 

How many hours have I lam here alone 
Without a hand or voice to. comfort me, 
List'ning the clock there with its sharp fierce tick 
And the dull roar of distant carriages, 
With none to drive away these noisy flies 
That swarm with such persistence round my head. 
And buzz and drop, and stinging crawl along 
My clammy forehead, down my burning nose, 
Till I hide stifling 'neath the coverlid, 
For I am grown too faint to brush them off; 
Now, too, the lamp fails, and but one wick holds 
The tottering flame — the others stinking stream 
With noisome smoke till all my darkening room 
Is thick and stifling with its poisonous smell. 
And that last flicker of light at length will go, 
And I be left in darkness all alone. 

God 1 God ! God ! I have been full of sin — 
We all are full, — but spare me from thy wrath. 
See what a wTotched thing thy creature is. 
Let me not die now — fill my veins with strength 



THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. 109 

That I may rule this people yet once more, 
Thy YicsiY on the earth, and teach to them 
Thy precepts and the rules of Holy Church. 

There flares the light out — darkness here at 
last ; 
But keep away, Death, keep away to-night, 
I camiot die thus in the dark alone — 
Oh, God ! you will not let me die here all alone. 
Holy Madonna, save me ! I ^nll burn 
A thousand candles in each Church in Rome 
Before thy altars ; on thy neck I'll hang 
A diamond necklace, richer, costlier far 
Than the Colonna wears on her full throat. 
Or than outdazzles Piombino's eyes. 
If you will save me from this horrid death. 

Soft ! I have slept, I tliink ; fainted perhaps, 
Who knows? but now I wake — ah, yes, again 
The infernal darkness, stench, and buzz of flies! 
Oh happy dream ! come back with your rich wmes ! 



110 THE DEATH OF GREGORY XYI. 

Champagne all beady foaming to its brim, 

Rich inky Aleatico, the cool 

Soft roughness of delicious old Bordeaux, 

Flasks of rare Orvieto, thinly sweet. 

All these were flowing down my thirsty throat. 

In a great stream I stood up to my neck 

And they were gurgling in my burning mouth. 

Why did I wake to such a cursed life ? 

Oh ! let me dream forever such a dream ! 

If that be heaven — 'tis heaven enough for me. 

What 's this I 've found ? some scattered lemon 

seeds 
Tipped from the glass I drained such hours ago. 
How sweet they taste — Good God ! how sweet 

they taste ! 
Yet stop, I must be careful, they 're so few. 

My strength is going, and my head swims round ; 
What is this sudden change ? Death, death, perhaps. 
And no one near with the Yiaticum. 



THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. Ill 

Go call a priest, a priest! Of all the crowd 
That fa^yned upon me, is there none will come 
And bring the blessed sacrament and place 
The holy wafer on these feverish lips ? 
Shall I lose heaven ? some one come quick, come 

quick 
And help me or my soul will else be lost. 

Where is my cope ? that richest one I mean. 
Stiff mth embroidered gold and precious stones. 
Fools ! bring it quick, I say — tis time to go ; 
And that great emerald clasp, Cellini's work — 
Have you forgot that ? you 're such blunderers. 
Now then, your Eminences, now to mass ! 

Spirits, avaimt ! ye come to mock me here — 
What ! will you flee not at the Papal sign ? 
Off 1 off ! I say — I never did you wrong, 
I know you not with your gaunt, haggard cheeks, 
And lamping eyes, and withered, crooked limbs. 
Wliy point your fingers at me thus, and thus 



112 THE DEATH OF GREGORY XVI. 

Make imprecation on my dying head ? 
Help ! Gaetano ! Guard ! help ! help ! I say. 
Here are the dead men bloody from the axe, 
And ghastly prisoners with their clanking chains, 
Dancing the dance of death around my bed, 
They strangle me I say, — help ! help ! oh, help ! 
Am I not God's viceo;erent on the earth ? 



Note. — Gregory XVI. died in the Vatican during the night 
of the 31st of May, 1846, alone, utterly deserted by even the 
meanest of his attendants, and suffering for want of the wine 
prescribed by his physicians as necessary to his sustenance. 
He was found dead in his bed by his physicians when they 
visited him in the morning ; and at the jjost mortem exam- 
ination nothing was found in his stomach but a few lemon 
seeds. He was 82 years old. In character he was ambitious 
and cruel ; in habits grossly intemperate. A full account of 
the circumstances of the Pope's death is given by Professor 
Gajani, in his Memoirs of a Roman Exile, chap, xxxvi. 



"DE PROFUNDIS CLAM AVI." 

I. 

The bells are ringrng, heavily swinging in the bel- 
fry to and fro, 

The long procession is slowly toiling, toiling on in 
the street below^ ; 

Is it funeral or a festa ? Hark ! that solemn 
chanting tells 

With responses sad and solemn, as it rises, dies, 
and dw^ells. 

It is a fmieral, not a festa. Low, the De Profundis 
swells. 

And hea\dly toll for the parted soul the throbbing 
funeral bells. 
8 



114 DE PROFUNDIS CLAM A VI. 



II. 

The priestly column is moving solemn — the drip- 
ping, tipping wax-lights flare ; 

Flare and swale, their guttering droppings caught 
by the boys that follow there ; 

Yellow and ghastly over the serges and cowls of 
Capuchins they glow, 

Over their shaven crowns and bearded faces as 
they chanting go — 

Chanting hoarsely the De Profundis while their 
murmur dies and swells, 

And heavily toll for the parted soul the pulsing 
funeral bells. 

III. 

See ! on their shoulders white-robed holders bear 

aloft the gloomy bier ; 
White-robed burial companies bear it ; never a 

friend is walking near : — 



DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI. 115 

Heavy with golden hem and broidery blackly flaps 

the velvet pall ; 
The golden death-head over the coffin, the golden 

fringes round it fall, — 
While from the lips of careless, hirehng priests 

the De Profundis swells, 
And heavily toU for the parted soul the throbbing 

funeral bells. 

IV. 

Now in a cluster, torches fluster, — the heavy cur- 
tain is pushed away. 

As at the wide church-door they enter, and the 
black-paUed coffin lay 

On its catafalque, frontmg the altar, girdled by 
candles tall and white. 

And there alone in the deepening gloom they leave 
it to He tin the middle night, — 

While the last sad tone of the De Profundis dies 
through the frescoed dome and swells. 

And the last deep knoll for the parted soul peals 
from the pulsing bells. 



116 DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI. 

V. 

Thence it is hurried and darkly buried, when the 
solemn midnight hangs above, 

By hirelings buried, without a prayer, or a sobbing 
last farewell of love, — 

Hurried and buried, the pomp all over, with none 
to shed above it a tear, — 

Hurried and hid like a thing of horror, mth never 
a friend or lover near, — 

And the solemn tone of the De Profundis now no 
longer rises and swells. 

And no longer toll for the parted soul the throb- 
bing funeral bells. 

VI. 

When through the portal of death the immortal 
hath passed, and left this house of clay — 

When to the grave this dust deserted is borne 
upon its silent way. 

Light me no torches — no hired procession — but 
ye beloved ones be near, 



DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI. 117 

And lay me beneath the trees tp slumber — leave 
me there with a prayer and tear — 

And your voices of love be the De Profundis that 
from your sorrowing bosoms swells, 

While throbbing toll for the parted soul the solemn 
funeral bells. 

Bagni di Lucca, Aug. 22, 1853. 



IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

Our captain 's glum to-niglit, he will not drink, 
But ever since he came last night from Rome 
He seeks to be alone. Yincenzo, come, 
What did you both see, you were with him there ? 
Throw some pine-knots upon the fire — 'tis cold. 
These bleak March nights in this damp cave of 

ours ; 
The tufa drips — the olive-wood wont blaze, 
But smoulders sulky as our captain there. 
Or spits out its fierce sparkles now and then. 
Draw up, and tell us what you saw at Rome ! 
And Steno, you and Maso can't you cease 
That cursed game of morra ; full an hour 
I've heard your quattro, cinque, tutti — Come, 
Leave ofi", and hear what 'Cenzo saw at Rome. 



IN THE MOUNTAINS. 119 

Viva the Carnival, I say, my boys ! 

At least, sometimes we can go back to Rome. 

Stop ! brim your glasses — are you ready, all ? 

Here's death and hell to all gendarmes, I say, 

And, Sangue della Madonna, health to him 

Who helps that rosy whiskered Enghsh lord 

At Subiaco of his golden boys. 

Come now, Vincenzo, what you saw at Rome. 

" Or bene, since you wish it, here it is ; 
I wish you joy of it when it is told. 
Our Captain there you know will go to Rome 
Despite its danger, — and we all know why ; 
Nina is there, — 'tis her black, lustrous eyes 
That spoil him for our leader, — half his heart 
Is rotten with the thinking of old times. 
And how it might have been. If we go on 
This way, with sparing knife and blood, as he 
Will have it, some fine morning we shall ride 
Chained in a cart, with four of those gendarmes 



120 IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

Riding beside us — all their carabines 

Well primed and loaded, — as Luigi did : 

That was a pleasant sight for all of us. 

I say, mj boys, there 's nothing but the knife 

Stops blabbing, shuts the eyes up, shears the 

tongue. 
When I die, let it be upon the grass, 
Under the sky, a bullet through my heart, — 
That's quickly over — but a noisome cell. 
Faugh ! in their prisons — is that death or life ? 
At the Falcone, as I passed to-night, 
Per Bacco, I saw, posted on the wall, 
(A group of travellers staring at it there,) 
Under the Pope's arms, a Proclama, — Well ! 
There was my measure, and our Captain's too. 
He's brave enough, I know, but then again, 
After an accident like that last month 
He '11 sulk a week — there's no more drink and 

fun ; 
But can we help it if we kill sometimes 
By accident, or when the blood is up ? 



IN THE MOUNTAINS. 121 

Then, he 's so soft too at such thues — don't speak 
In his quick way, but kindly, Uke a girl. 
That one can't quarrel with him. Well, Ave know 
Nina is at the bottom of all that. 

" But that 's no news to us — so let it go — 
'Twas just the same w^ith Gigi as with him. 
His heart was never in our business ; 
And after he had killed that Enghshman, 
(Damn him, I only wish he'd kept at home,) 
Half by mischance, and half in self-defence, 
The fool so stuck to him, — and that young girl 
With her fair hair, screamed curses after us. 
And lifted up her bloody hands to heaven. 
And fainted on her father's body there, — 
Gigi lost heart in life — well ! that was bad ! 
I 've thought of that girl, too, more times than once ; 
But that 's our trade ! things are not always 

sweet. 
By God ! what we saw yesterday in Rome 
Was not so sweet. 



122 IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

" Well ! well ! I'll tell you that — 
But just a minute first — You know 'tis now 
Just two years to a day since Gigi came 
Up in the mountains here to join our band ; 
And you remember, too, what brought him here ; 
Bah ! 'twas the same thing brought a half a 

score ; 
Brought you — and you — and me — and him out 

there — 
Only the old thing — a conspiracy — 
Attempt at revolution. We all thought — 
Fools ! fools ! we Kttle handful of tried friends, 
All sworn to secrecy, — (we have no brains. 
Of course we might have known there was a 

spy, 

Are there not always spies ? ) we thought to end 
The reign of priests, and get back once again 
What, some time, God knows when, our fathers 

had. 
The dear old liberty to speak and move 
And jerk our neck out from the galling yoke 



IN THE MOUNTAINS. 123 

Of Priests and Cardinals ; — by heaven ! the 

Priests, 
Let us once get the upper hand again, 
Shall have a red cloak like the Cardinals, 
Dipped in the best of djes, their own rank blood. 
Have they not cursed us all, and spoilt our life"? 
Since ToUa died, instead of prayer at night, 
I've only sworn one oath — I'll keep it too — 
God willing. Ah ! what wretched fools we were ; 
Yet who so swift to swear as Angelo ; 
I almost doubted then, he swore so swift. 
The Jesuit ! how he urged and pricked us on, 
Just to bring in the Sbirri at the last ; 
Some hid, some fled, — I think I left my mark 
Before I fled upon our Jesuit's neck, 
He screamed so — but at last there was for all 
But one way left, that was not worse than death, 
(To leave our dear beloved Italy) 
That way w^as to the mountains — Gigi came. 
What was there else for him, to us, of course. 
Ah ! I remember — we remember all. 



124 IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

Those passionate words, that wild grand curse of 

his, 
Like the old Roman pictures, when he held 
Both his strained hands up, every finger spread, 
And cursed the priests, and then burst into 

tears ; 
And how we kissed him and embraced liim there ; 
He was too good for us, something too fine 
For our wild life, — a razor to hew stones; — 
It was not love of gold nor of revenge. 
Nor even the wild freedom of our life, — 
'Twas dire necessity — and one thuig more, 
His love for — you know who — that kept him 

here. 

" After that Enghsh girl's affair, he lost 
All fire and spirit, hated life, at last, 
I think on purpose, flung him in the way 
Of capture, thinking death might expiate 
This crime — we all of us are so at times, 
Only the fits came oftener to him. 



IN THE MOUXTAINS. 125 

" Such friendship as the Captam had for him ! 
Some time the Captain '11 go the self-same way, — 
You mark my words. But here I come at last 
To what we saw at Rome. At nearly four 
We reached the gate of San Giovanni, where 
Between the wine carts unperceived we slipped. 
In Contadino dress, — the soldiers round 
Scarce noticed us, then down through the back 

streets, 
(And even there the Carnival flowed o'er) 
Where I put on an Arlecchino's dress. 
Painted my face mth stripes of Avhite and red. 
And parted with the Captain — on he went 
To Nina — I was for the Carnival, 
Again to meet him when the midnight struck. 

" Oh ! what a joy to be again in Rome ! 
I could have kissed the pavement in my joy. 
All domi the Corso's length the Carnival 
Was at its maddest height — the narrow street 
Swarmed with its life ; from windows, balconies. 



126 IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

And stagings improvised along the squares, 
And hung with rich embroidered tapestries, 
Thousands of eager laughing faces looked ; 
Even the roofs were thronged, the door-wajs 

crammed, 
The benches on the sidewalks crowded close 
With black-haired girls from the Trastevere, 
All smiUng. What a tumult of mad joy ! 
What noises ! what costumes ! what dusty showers 
Of white confetti; what mad pelting there, 
With bursts of laughter, mixed with fifes and 

drums. 
And squeaking pipes, and tinkhng of guitars ; 
Flowers flying, faUing, raining everywhere ; 
Flowers on the pavement, where the scrambhng boys 
Fought for them under files of carriages ; 
Flowers in great masses at the corners ; flowers 
In monstrous baskets, borne upon the heads 
Of Contadini. Oh ! what life and fun ! 
By heaven ! there was but one thing raised my 

gorge — 



IN THE MOUNTAINS. 127 

The Carabinieri, — there they stood, 

Like statues, at the opemng of the streets — 

I would that all their throats were one great 

throat, 
That I could slit it once for all, and then 
Die, if need be. And yet, why speak of them ? 
They are but tools their rascal masters use. 

" At last the carriages were driven out. 
The cavalry, with clattering hoofs, dashed down 
The throngmg Corso, splitting through the mass ; 
Then the wild horses, with their spangles on. 
And crackling foil, and beating balls and spurs. 
Rushed madly up the street. — The cannon pealed, 
And all was over for a time. 

" I say 
Fill up my glass again! My throat is dry 
With all this talking — I say, fill it up. 
Up to the brim — no stinting, if I talk. 



128 IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

" At One I joined the Captain ; I was flushed 
With wine ; but his face sobered me at once ; 
He did not speak, but something in his look 
Told 'twas no time for jesting. Nina said, 
' Bad news, Lippino, you must leave at once ; 
Lucky perhaps, you came so late — I fear 
Something is wrong. Where have you been to- 
night ? 
Drinking and talking ? Man, you '11 lose your 

head 
If you don't learn to rule that tongue of yours. 
Something 's suspected ; the pohce were do\^Ti 
An hour ago, but all was quiet then — 
Now they are gone do you slip out and run — 
Take the back streets — you'll find some place to 

sleep, 
But be behmd Rienzi's house at Four ; 
He'll meet you there — you must be off at once. 
Besides,' she whispered, ' Gigi's day has come. 
Poor fellow — he won't suffer after Four.' 



IN THE MOUNTAINS. 129 

Here her ejes flashed, burning away the tears 
That gushed mto them, as these words she said. 

" Nina ! Per Dio ! she is worth a man. 
If I have ever said our Captain's weak 
To think of her so much, I was a fooL 
If she loved me as she loves him, I swear 
Not all the bayonets of Rome could keep 
My foot from out the city — no ! nor yours ! 

" Hist ! is he coming ? If he is, I stop ; 
For next to Nina he loved Gigi best ; 
And now my story is of Gigi. — No ! 
There stands he still, his hat pulled o'er his brow. 
Stay ! let me carry him a glass of wme. 
Poor feUow ! he feels bad enough, I know. 
And this damp night air gnaAvs into one's bones. 

^' He took it, so all 's well — his voice, perhaps, 
A little husky, that was not from cold. 
Well, then ! the few hours left of night I roamed 
9 



180 IX THE MOUXTAIXS. 

Through the back streets, and Avatched the river 

swirl 
Blacklj away — then dozed an hour or so 
In the dim corner of the Temple of Peace, 
Till day began to lighten the gray mists. 
xVt four I met the Captain — neither spoke 
A word of Gigi, though w^e both of us 
Thought only of him. — Silently and sad 
In the grim dawn we took our way along ; 
And as we w^ent into the Yelabro, 
Down through the Bocca della Verita, 
We heard the dull beat of a single drum. 
The sound of feet, the dragging of a cart. 
The sound jarred terribly against the heart ; 
An awful sense of something vague and dread 
Came over me, — we paused, — a moment more 
The Confraternita, with hooded heads. 
Their dark eyes glaring ghastly through the holes, 
And their black banner gilt with skull and bones, 
Turned from the street into the open square. 
Then files of soldiers — then a guarded cart — 



IX THE MOUNTAINS. 181 

God I 'twas Lnigi standing there. — My knees 
Shook underneath me for a moment's space, 
Not out of fear, (you know me all too well 
For tJiat^ I think.) A ghastly, dreadful sense 
Of horror crept along my chilling nerves — 
I caught his eye — 'twas firm and fixed as 

Fate ; 
A smile that I could see, because I knew 
My comrade, sudden gleamed across his face, 
Then it Avas locked up in its fierce resolve. 
Only his under lip twitched now and then. 
Things Avent as in a dream, the old sad way. 
Why tell you how it went ? At last he stood 
Erect a moment, turned his head all round. 
Then suddenly, and with a clear full voice 
Cried, shouting, '• Viva la Republican 
E Liberia per tiiW il popolo 

E Morte.^ .... Here a deafening roll of dnmis 
Thundered his voice out. — S^vift he was drawn 

back. 
I saw his lips move, and his arms thrown up, 



132 IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

The priest beside him raised the crucifix, 

Thud, went the axe, .... Gah !^ what a horrid 

sound ! 

'' Give me some wine ! — Oh, God ! when comes 
the time 
For us, the people, — when the miracles 
Of San Pietro shall be wrought for us ? 
Dear, brave Luigi ! when that time shall come -— 
Here, swear it with me, all of you — no spy 
Is here among us — for each drop of blood 
A cowl shall fall — We '11 sweep the streets for 

them, 
They shall not want for dye for Cardinals ! 



LOVE. 

When daffodils began to blow, 
And apple blossoms thick to snow 

Upon the brown and breaking mould — 
'Twas in the spring — we kissed and sighed 
And loved, and heaven and earth defied, 

We were so young and bold. 

The flutteruig bob-link dropped his song. 
The first young swallow curved along, 

The daisy stared in sturdy pride, 
When loitering on we plucked the flowers. 
But dared not o"\\ii those thoughts of ours. 

Which yet we could not hide. 



1^]4 LOVE. 

Tiptoe you bent the lilac spray 
And shook its rain of dew away 

And reached it to me with a smile : 
" Smell that, how full of spring it is " — 
'Tis now as full of memories 

As 'twas of dew erewhile. 

Your hand I took, to help you down 
The broken wall, from stone to stone, 

Across the shallow bubbling; brook. 
Ah ! what a thrill went from that palm, 
That would not let my blood be calm, 

And through my pulses shook. 

Often our eyes met as Ave turned, 

And both our cheeks with passion burned, 

And both our hearts grew riotous. 
Till as we sat beneath the grove, 
I kissed you — whispering, " we love " — 

As thus I do — and thus. 



LOVE. 135 

When passion had found utterance, 
Our frightened hearts began to glance 

Into the Future's every day ; 
And how shall we our love conceal, 
Or dare our passion to reveal, 

" We are too young," they '11 say. 

Alas ! we are not now too young, 
Yet love to us hath safely clung, 

Despite of sorrow, years, and care — 
But ah ! we have not what we had, 
We cannot be so free, so glad, 

So foolish as we were. 



SHADOWS AND VOICES AT TWILIGHT. 

The fire-light flickers — closed are the shutters — 

The fountain and the rain 
Plash in the weUs, and gush from the gutters 

With a dull monotonous pain. 



The fire-light flickers — on wall and ceiling 

Wild uncouth shadows dance, 
To the corners dark so SAviftly stealing, 

When the flame darts up with a glance. 



I know there's a great black shadow mowing 

And mocking above me there. 
As over the fire my figure bowing 

Into its coals I stare. 



SHADOWS AND VOICES AT TWILIGHT. 137 

The sparks in the soot are toiUng and moihng 

Like a crowd of burning flies, — 
From its hot pores driven all hissing and boiling 

The shrill sap screaming dies. 

What voice is that at the window waihng ? 

That wails in the sobl)ing rain — 
That wails and moans with a voice, now faihng, 

Now rising with screams of pain. 

Is it a friend that shakes and rattles 

And beats at the panes so thin ? 
Or some lost soul with the Fiend that battles, 

Imploring to enter in ? 

Some httle cliild that is freezing and dying, 

And longs for the glowing fire, 
That pats with its little cold hands — crying 

With passionate desire ? 



138 SHADOWS AND VOICES AT TWILIGHT. 

Is it some spirit that ere he quitteth 

This earth, is pausing there, 
Some dear friend's flitting spirit that sitteth 

On my sill in the bleak night air ? 

No ! 'tis the wind alone that clatters 

Against the shuddering pane, 
And some tree-branch on the blind that patters 

With the gusts of the windy rain. 

The world is weird ; in these twilight regions 

Are shapes of fear and fright — 
I shrink from their nightmares that gather in 
legions, — 

Bring in the light ! 



A TESTAMENT. 

Dear friend ! if Death against my door 

Be first to knock, and bid me rise, 
Wliat tri^dal things shall have the power 

To bring the tears into your eyes. 
You '11 gaze upon each worthless thing 

That once was mine, and with a sigh 
You '11 say, " Ah ! we were happy then. 

In the old days gone by." 

You '11 look upon this blackened flute. 

And say, " when he was young and gay. 

And light of heart, and light of foot. 
What sentimental airs he'd play." 

You '11 think on those old serenades 
You listened to with beaming eye. 



140 A TESTAMENT. 

And saj, '' Ah ! we were happy then, 
In the old days gone by." 

You '11 turn my old portfolio o'er, 

Its rudest scraps you '11 cherish then. 
For they will have the magic power 

To make me live to you again. 
You '11 travel o'er each pictured scene 

That shall survive this hand and eye. 
And say, " Ah ! we were happy then. 

In the old days gone by." 

You '11 keep these tools so smoothly worn 

With which I shape the facile clay. 
And gaze upon them, half-forlorn. 

Then lay them carefully away. 
You '11 say, " His hand could deftly shape. 

None knew and valued him as I, 
And ah ! we were so happy then, 

In the old days gone by." 



A TESTAMENT. 141 

These verses, spiritless and weak, 

(Poor weeds that never came to flower,) 
Of joyous times to you may speak. 

May speak of many a bitter hour. 
You '11 read the records wrung by pain, 

When Death and Grief stood weepmg nigh. 
And say, " Ah ! we were wretched then. 

In the old days gone by." 

You '11 kindly look on what I've done. 

And say, " How earnestly he strove, 
Not all in vain, nor all alone, — 

I sought to help him with my love, 
And if he failed, 'twas not from lack 

Of heart and will, and purpose high," — 
And " Ah ! we both were happy then, 

In the old days gone by." 

And after you have mourned awhile. 
And Grief's deep rut hath worn away. 



142 A TESTAMENT. 

Recall my foolish jokes, and smile, 
For I would have my memory gay 

Think of me in my happiest mood, 
And speak of me as I were nigh. 

And feel that I am with you still. 
As in the days gone by. 



ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 

"Look on this picture, and on this." 

All is Italian here ! — the orange grove, 
Through whose cool shade we every morning rove 
To pluck its glowing fruit — our villa white 
With loggias broad, where far into the night 
We sit and breathe the intoxicating air 
With orange-blossoms filled, or free from care 
In the cool shadow of the morning lie 
And dream and watch the lazy boats go by 
Laden with fruits for Naples — the soft gales 
SweUing and straining in their lateen sails, — 
Or, with their canvas, hanging all adroop. 
While the oars flash, and rowers rise and stoop. 
Look at this broad, flat plain heaped full of trees, 
With here and there a villa, — these blue seas 



144 ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 

Whispering below the sheer chffs on the shore, 

These ochre mountains bare or ohved o'er, 

The road that chngs to them along the coast, 

The arching viaducts, the thick vines tost 

Erom tree to tree, that swing with every breeze, — ■• 

What can be more Itahan than all these ? 

The streets, too, through whose narrow, dusty track 

We ride in files, each on our donkey's back. 

When evening's shadow o'er the high gray walls, 

O'ertopped with oranges and olives, falls. 

And at each corner 'neath its roof of tiles, 

Hung with poor offerings, the Madonna smiles 

In her rude shrine so picturesque with dirt. 

Is this not Italy ? Your nerves are hurt 

By that expression — dirt — nay, then I see 

You love not nature, art, nor Italy. 

Nature abhors what housewives love, — the clean — 

And beauty hides Avhen pail and brush come in — 

She joys in grime, mould, rot, mud, spots, and 

stains, — 
Whitewash your wall, and see what curious pains 



ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 145 

They take to undo all your hands have done ; 
Ask help of wind, rain, dust, and sun — 
Crack it and twist it, plant its clifts with seeds. 
Gray, green, and yellow it mth moss and weeds, 
Dye it with wet leaves, call the spiders in. 
Beseech the lizards there to leave their skin, 
Strain every nerve to spoil the work you do ; 
You do not like it? all the worse for you. 

But I forget my theme — just look once more 
O'er the blue bay, along whose foam-fringed shore 
White Naples glimmers and Resina dreams, — 
And 'neath the smoky trail that threatening 

streams 
From bare Vesuvius' cone, through hving bloom 
Pompeii's ghost peers from its ashy tomb. 
Is not this Italy? And that strange song 
You hear yon peasant screaming with its long 
And drawHng minor monotone, has not 
That song the very perfume of the spot ? 
10 



146 ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 

A hard old sailor that Ulysses was, 
Or he had never had the heart to pass 
These fair Sorrento shores — and rather old 
Perhaps, for love, if the plain truth were told. 
Faith ! if our Menicuccia here should sit 
On these high cliffs, and beckon me to it 
With her black hair and eyes and sunny smile 
Mid grapes and oranges — I'd think a while 
Ere I refused. His Sirens, I suppose. 
Sang the old song that every girl here knows ; 
Our Menicuccia sings it now and then, 
A Siren fair as his — "Ti voglio hen!^"* 

There comes Antonio, lazy, sunny-faced, 
Brown as a nut and naked to the waist. 
With the brass coin that saves liis ship from wreck 
Stamped with the Virgin, on liis sun-burnt neck. 
See ! what a store of tempting fruit he brings 
In his great basket, that he lightly swings 
From off his head, and smiles, and offers heaps 
Of luscious oranges, and figs, and grapes. 



ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 



147 



And rusted apricots, and purple plums, 
For one carlino — one of his brown thumbs 
Uphfted, tells the price — you give him half: 
He shrugs, and says, " IJ poco;' with a laugh. 
But see ! within this corner where he hides 
His red tomatoes Avith their sabred sides — 
Those look like home — but what a difference! 
"J. revederla, — grazie 'Celenz.''' 

Stop, dearest, here, and let your fancy roam, 
Just for the contrast, to old things at home ; 
From lazy Italy's poetic shows 
To stern New England's puritanic prose. 
Remember that gray cottage at the foot 
Of the hill's slope, where two great elms had root 
Beside the porch, hke sentinels to guard 
The entrance — and the httle fenced-in yard. 
With its heaped flower-plots, banked and edged with 

laths. 
Through which were cut those narrow sunken 
paths, — 



148 ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 

Oh ! wliat a difference 'twixt that and this ! 

Yet there we had an unbought happiness. 

There grew the autumn flowers our childhood 

knew, 
Kich tiger-hhes, briUiant cockscombs too, 
The pale pink clusters of full-flowering flox. 
The antique lamps of seedy hollyhocks. 
Nasturtiums shedding forth their orange glow 
O'er the gray palings, clustering thick below 
The freaked sweet-williams, dahlias stiff and bold, 
And the rank beauty of the marigold. 

Our chamber window, where we used to sit 
Long mornings (Ah ! how I remember it,) 
Looked o'er a slope of green unto a grove, 
('Twas there I dared to speak to you of love,) 
And 'twixt it and the house a brown slow brook 
Slipped through the long rank grass, and singmg 

took 
The golden leaves, two willows, old and lopped. 
Into its shallow bed as tribute dropped. 



ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 149 

And close beneath, our kitchen garden spread, 
With a wild grape-vine tramed along the shed. 
That o'er the whitewashed boards its shadow swung, 
And bore a fruit that puckered every tongue. 
There oft we saw our hostess, formal, prim. 
With parchment forehead, hps compressed and grim, 
Stiff as a dahlia, walk beside the fence. 
And from the shrub-trees pluck a furry quince ; 
Or in the hot noon's silence many a day 
We watched the cat pick daintily her way 
Among the beds, and leap the viny coil 
TMiere golden pumpkins dozed upon the soil. 

I seem again to see, while talking thus. 
The smoke-like beds of tall asparagus. 
The rumpled cabbage squat upon the grovmd. 
The bean-vines from their high poles groping round, 
The maize heads rusting in the autumn sun 
And dropping many a stiff green gonfalon. 
And those sad sunflowers, shorn of summer rays, 
Bending to earth their great black seedy face. 



150 ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 

Here in this land of orange, olive, vine, 
How strange these memories of mine and thine ; 
Yet dear, for all its prose, New England seems 
Hazed mth poetic hues by childhood's dreams. 

Do you remember too, how many a day 
On the brown needles of the pines we lay. 
And o'er us heard the murmur of the breeze 
Sift through them, like the swell of far-off seas. 
While some red maple through the vistas blazed. 
And velvet cones the scarlet sumac raised ? 
Then, while you wove the barberry's coral spray 
Round your straw hat, or in your rustic way 
Hung at each ear a cluster, far more fair 
Than the gold ear-rings they were strung to there. 
I lay and read some poem grand and strong 
Of Browmng's — or with Tennyson's rich song 
Revelled awhile, and in your glowing face 
Saw the quick answer to its power or grace. 
And oft the chickadee's quick voice we heard. 
Or the sharp mewing of the shrill cat-bird. 



ITALY AND NEW ENGLAND. 151 

Or the high call from out the upper air 
Of some black crow inquiring of us there, 
While soft with haze the autumn day passed by, 
Till sunset set on fire the western sky. 

But see ! Domenico the donkey brings, 
Now for our ride ! — No more New England 

thuigs — 
There come our good friends Nero and his wife, 
And there 's our Toffel T\dth them on my life. 



THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 

I'm still at work you see, but never mind ! 
I was about to lay my palette down 
Just as I heard you knock. I thought at first 
It might be your brave Enghsh friend again, 
Who stared so when he saw me in my blouse, 
As if to say, " By Jove ! these foreigners 
Are all the same ! beggars and noblemen ! 
Why can't they do as we do ? " Now confess 
You in a friendly way had over-praised 
My merits to him, and he thought to meet 
Some Sydney, Bayard, and he found poor me. 
His disappointment was so evident 
I scarce could hide a smile. . . . There, fling your- 
self 



THE MARCHESS CASTELLO. 153 

Upon the sofa there ; 'tis rather hard, 

But here m our villeggiatura clays 

We do not Uve for show, — no 1 on my soul, 

Nor yet for comfort, as you Enghsh thmk ; 

And you're half right too, that's the worst of it — 

Nothing is sharp as an unpleasant truth ; 

A lie 's a he, and there 's the end of it. 

But a hard truth, what stomach can digest ! 

Our comfort here is in our laziness. 

Not in our furniture, and house, and all 

Those nice appHances you know so well. 

Our easy tempers and indifference 

Make up to us for your material aids ; 

We are contented with our easy selves. 

You are contented with your easy chair. 

You^ if your tea 's not right, will fume and scold, 

We shrug our shoulders, drink it down, and say, 

" Eh ! Pazienza I " Yes, I know we 're fools 

To be content with anything we have. 

For discontent's a sort of bastard child 

Of high ambition, that would prick us on 



154 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

To admirable ends — while weak content 
Flies to the cloister, and drones out its hfe, 
And childless dies. 

That is a little view 
I sketched at Ostia one day last May, 
With Sandro — what a charming place it is ! 
With its blue sea, and ruined, rusted walls, 
And grassy slopes with marbles scattered o'er — 
Of course you've been there, and picked up, no 

doubt. 
Some of those Breccie which you English like. 
I 'm glad my Httle picture pleases you ; 
I think it has a look of air and light — 
A sentiment, at least — that's what we get, 
We amateurs, that artists sometimes lose. 
How hard it is to "get both things at once. 
Body and soul, — half of our pictures now 
Are mere thin ghosts, and half are corpses quite, — 
I said how hard, I should have said how rare. 
For nothino;'s hard to him who does it well. 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 155 

In Art we work to learn our alphabet ; 

The language learnt, 'tis easy enough to speak, 

If we have only anything to say ; 

But for the most part in our modern art 

I find so many a pretty phrase and word. 

Such eloquent expressions of no thought ! 

And yet how much, how much there is to say! 

We here in Italy are artist-born ; 
Beauty enchants us — we've more love in us. 
As oft you've said, (it seems so true to me,) 
Than m the North is seen. You are more cold, 
And for the most part easily mistake 
Our warmer natures. You have judgment, sense. 
Notions of duty, rules of hfe and thought. 
While we have impulse, passion, feelmgs quick 
For love or hate — mere cliildren as you say — 
With the same charms and faults that childhood 

has. 
And mark ! between us both this difference, 
You never dare express the half you feel. 



156 THE MAKCHESE CASTELLO 

We say the whole, nay, often over-say — 

That's but our nature which you call excess. 

And so, you see, we both misapprehend 

Each other's virtues, and can only see 

Each other's faults. I ask you now, my friend, 

What is the notion that most English have 

Of us Italians ? ignorant and false, 

Full of ungoverned passion, quick to spill 

Blood at a word ; whose best and worst of types 

Are bandit, beggar, priest, or some dark boy 

Bearing his plaster figures on his head. 

But is this all ? Is there no gentleman ? 

Are we then different from all the world ? 

Now you'll agree how very false this is ; 

You 've lived with us, and know that kindUer hearts, 

More full of sweetness, tenderness — more prompt 

To generous acts of pure unselfishness, 

More quick to help and sympathize in grief. 

Are nowhere found. Just look at Tita here, 

Or our Giovanni, or that higher type, 

Luigi, the physician of the town ; 



GIVES HIS VIEWS OX ITALY. 157 

Is there a larger, nobler heart on earth ? 

Is there a head more Avise, a hand more skilled 

In his profession — one more free from all 

That's poor and petty in his make than he ? 

Think hoAV for weeks he tended at your bed 

Regardless of himself — night after night 

For you, a stranger he had never seen, 

Sohcitous as you had been his child ! 

And all for what ? not money as we know, 

But only from the breadth of his great heart. 

No ostentation in him, no false pride. 

No coward fear of what you thought of him. 

But a true gentleman as ever lived. 

Ask him to go to Rome — strike with the spur 

For his ambition — he will smile and say, 

" I am content — the people love me here — 

I love the people." Urge his talents lost 

In this small village — tell him he may gain 

A world-wide fame, and with it fortune too — 

Still he will smile and say, " I am content." 

I own, one will not always meet with such. 



158 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

He's not a universal rule — I know 

That other one, the veriest of quacks, 

Who stood with white gloves round a dying bed, 

And hurried off from all that agony 

To dine, and chat, and laugh with some milord — 

But he, the thing, is the exception here. 

And he's a half-breed, bred in your own land. 

So too, you know our best society ; 
Is it so stupid, ignorant, and dull 
As they who never entered it declare ? 
I know your England ; ' tis a noble soil, 
Rich in strong minds and educated power, 
And stronger in its character than all — 
Yet cold and doubting when a stranger comes, 
(Unless he be a hon to be shown.) 
Each man's his castle — not his house alone. 
His wife, his child, his dog, are castles too. 
A stranger is the enemy, opposed 
By threatening outworks of reserve and pride. 
Through which with caution he must work his way. 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 159 

Once entered, all is honest, simple, frank. 

You are not quick to feel where you give pain. 

And oft indifference hurts us most of all. 

As a blunt knife will make the worst of wounds. 

But for the brain as well as for the heart, 

I Avill not own a better can be found 

In all wide Europe than in Italy. 

Priest-ride your people, crush them 'neath the heel 

Of despots till no spark of freedom 's left. 

Put do^yn your press and schools, and see at last. 

If you are better than the worst of us. 

I know youi' answer — 'tis a grand one too, 

" We carved our freedom with our own right hands ; 

Do you carve yours." Ah! many a time we have 

Carved that great figure to be overthrown 

And haled by Europe down into the dust ; 

Beside, position worked for you, and chance ; 

You are an island guarded by wild waves, 

Round which the storm flames mth its fiery sword. 

With a rude coast that battlements you round — 

And these are armies to ward off attack. 



160 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

Then, too, your climate 's chill, and wants the 

charms 
That breed desire and lure the foreign foe. 
We, all exposed, with thousand easy ports, 
A lovely landscape and a gentle sky. 
Have been the fighting-ground for centuries, 
Where foreign foes have stirred domestic feuds — 
For who could help to covet what they saw ? 
But I admit your grand advantages ; 
None honors more your struggles for yourselves, 
None envies more your Freedom — stretch to us 
Your hand and help us when we fight for ours. 
And when you scout at us as ignorant. 
Ready in crime, and apt for cruel rule. 
Look at your factories and mines at home, 
Look at the purlieus of your London world. 
And tell me have we any thing so bad ? 

One thing among us never is crushed out, 
One thing that we above all nations have — 
The love of beauty and the frank, sweet smile. 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 161 

And that best courtesy born of the heart. 
No ! not the rudest peasant, who all day 
Dreams on his staff and tends his nibbling sheep 
Among the ruins, is without them all. 
The very beggar, with his tattered cloak 
Thrown o'er liis shoulder, shows his proud descent ; 
You feel the gens togator lives in him. 
And for the highest ranks (excuse the boast) 
You will not find more dignity and grace. 
At once more simpleness and elegance, 
Than in our best society in Rome. 
At least, I have not seen it — What say you? 
The Englishman is conscious, awkward, cold ; 
The Frenchman fidgetty, and wants repose ; 
The German clumsy, always without tact. 
I speak of manner, not of matter now, 
I say this just to show how easily 
We might retort on Avhat they say of us. 
But then again, I cannot help but own 
We've not the sparkling esprit of the French, 
Nor yet the heartless sneer that spoils it so. 
11 



162 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

We 've not the German's metaphysic depth, 
And not his dulness and his uncouth ways. 
We 've not your quietness of character, 
Your cold, still energies — we also want 
Your servile admiration for a lord. 

I know as well as any we have faults, 
Great faults — the greatest of them, jealousy. 
We never can cohere. We may be packed 
Like sand-grains by the stress of some great force, 
But dry and crumble easily apart ; 
Y^et better than all others we have writ 
The laws of poHtics and government. 
And we alone in Europe represent 
By all our history, all our struggles fierce 
For Freedom, all our great plebeian names. 
The truly democratic element. 

We need development ; and so would you, 
Crushed 'neath a despotism stern as ours. 
Yet one would think, to hear your countrymen, 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 163 

That all our breed of noble minds was dead, 

That learning, genius, power had all died out. 

Yet not unknown to science are the names 

That Brocchi, Volta, and Galvani bore ; 

Nor Romagnosi's, in the highest walk 

Of Jurisprudence. As Historians, too, 

Micali, Kossi, Botta, and Cantu 

May surely hold an honorable place. 

And in Philology, who stand above 

Our Mezzofanti or our learned Mai. 

But in Romance, and Poetry, and Art, 

What scores of names — I will not call them o'er, 

All scholars know them. — Even while I write, 

Ruffini adds to you and us a name. 

I do not comit it a surprise to find 
We do so little, but we do so much 
With France and Austria treading on our neck. 
Take oiF that pressure, — see our Piedmont 
Start like a giant up. Five years ago 
She was a child, already she 's a power. 



164 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

You said, how short a time ago, to her 
Just what you say to us. Give us a chance, 
The seed is good — in free soil it would grow. 

But of all people, in our earnest hope 
For freedom, least of sympathy we get 
From Anglo-Saxon blood, whether it be 
On your cold island, or beyond the sea, 
America — and from the last the least. 
" Only too good for them the government. 
They 're only fit to trample on," 'tis said ; 
'^ What ! Liberty for them — why that 's a boon 
No nation's fit to have — excepting ours." 

Who taught to them their sea-laws ? From whose 

code 
Did commerce draw its rules ? What merchants 

vied 
With those of Florence, Genoa, Venice ? Where 
Got they their phrase of " Merchant Princes ? " 

Say! 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 165 

I will not speak of art, — ihat''s wanting yet, 

And always will be in their history, — 

But will they blow iis some fine Venice glass ? 

Or build us roads like the Cornice road? 

Or weave us velvets hke the Genoese, 

Or Tuscan silks ? . . . I see you smile at me, 

I was too Avarm, and so would you be too ; 

For of all people they should surely have 

A generous sympathy, at least, for us ; 

We found their world, and wrote their history first. 

Not that I know these people — no ! not I ! 
I only take your own account of them, 
One never meets them in society ; 
I never knew but one — I must confess 
We took a fancy, all of us, to him. 
And he liked us almost too well, I fear. 
As 'for the rest, some pretty, fragile girl, 
Wlio on the Pincio's terrace now and then 
Is pointed out — is all I know of them. 



166 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

In fact, our notions somewhat are confused -■ 
'Twixt you and them — nay, do not take it ill — 
They speak your language, and we know them not ; 
They may be all you say, for what we know, 
And yet I hope you are not just to them. 

I love my Italy — 'and when I see 
Conceited upstarts, from whatever land, 
(Yours, my dear friend, as well as all the rest,) 
Whose friends are couriers, and that rabble vile 
That haunts the traveller as the jackal haunts 
The lion's steps ; or rather, like those wolves 
That ring about the wounded buffalo 
With their white, snarling halo, — when, I say. 
Such fellows, puffed with pur^e-proud ignorance. 
Who speak no language but their own, nor know 
Our history or hopes, 'go hurrying through. 
And sneer, " These fellows have what they deserve, 
Freedom for them is just too good a joke," 
It stirs my blood, — I see, too, it stirs yours. 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 167 

But why complain ? you make the same mistake 
Among all people — what 's the Frenchman's type ? 
The dancing master with grimacing airs — 
The German's but a smoking, bearded boor — 
And yours, you ought at least to know yourself, 
A dull John Bull, with an enormous paunch. 

Mark, now, how inconsistently you speak ? 
First, we are far too fierce and unrestrained 
In all our passions to bear Liberty ; 
Then we 're so weak, and tame, and cowardly. 
We sufier wrongs wliich we might purge mth blood. 

What do we want ? what have we ever asked 
That raises thus the pity and contempt 
Of your free nations ? All we ask is this — 
Not a republic yet, no wild vague schemes, 
But some free privilege of government. 
Some chamber where the people shall have voice 
To urge their rights and tell their grievances; 
Free schools, a free press, and the right to speak. 



168 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

We ask for something more than simply priests 
To govern and direct, — we ask for Law, 
For Justice, and for open unbribed courts. 
We ask a chance for Commerce and for Trade — 
Railroads to chain our glorious land together, 
And the white sails of ships that once were ours. 

I do not dare to trust myself to speak 
Of what has happened dow^n in Naples there, — 
All words are w^eak to utter what I Avould ; 
Crimes such as those are punished not by words, 
But acts, — and as there lives a God in heaven, 
A day will come for retribution soon. 

We are not ready then for Liberty ! 
But with such yoke as now weighs on our neck 
How can we grow more ready ? How attain 
The stature of the man that in us is ? 
Give us a high room, where no longer cramped 
By the low ceiling of our prison cell. 
We may at least strive to stand up erect, 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 169 

As best we may with these bent frames of ours. 
But tell us not to stand up m our cell ! 
Give us a chance ! the heart and mind of man 
Need freedom as the very flowers need hght. 
You do not say the plant all pale and blanched 
In the dark cellar, is not fit for day 
Because it changes not to green at once, 
Without the dayhght ; — so, you do not say 
First learn to s^\im before you wet your feet. 
Men grow to Freedom, and not all at once, 
Full and complete in all her panoply, 
Sprmg hke Minerva from the head of Jove. 
Bear vnth us; if we make mistakes at first, 
Our sad experience is our surest help ! 
But now betwixt the bayonets and cowls. 
Small chance for heart and mind to grow at all. 

Pardon, my friend, for this long talk of mine, 
And for my foolish boasting and my warmth ! 
But why ask pardon ? You love Italy, 
And you are almost one of us, — how else 
Had I dared say the words that I have said ? 



170 THE MARCHESE CASTELLO 

Pray do not go ! I wish you to admire 

This charming little group of Vieux Saxe 

I bought in Rome last week, — I paid too much, 

But 'tis so delicately, nicely done ! 

'T is sad the art is so entirely lost ; — 

This has the very spirit of Watteau ; 

But those the moderns make in Dresden now^. 

Are rude and clumsy like a journeyman's. 

Do you walk now ? If so I '11 go with you — 

I've painted here so long I must refresh 

My eye with nature. If you please, we '11 go 

Along the galleria by the Lake. 

To-day 's a festa — we '11 be sure to meet. 

Up by the Reformati's convent church 

The contadine in their best costumes. 

And don't forget to-morrow ! by the way — 

Our friends are coming from the Villas round 

Beyond Frascati to our rustic ball, 

And all the pretty contadine too. 

With their gallants, dressed in their choicest trim'; 



GIVES HIS VIEWS ON ITALY. 171 

The village band will play for us to dance, 
And you will see our true democracy, 
The peasants and the princes, hand m hand. 
Not with that dreadful condescending way 
Perhaps you fancy — but as friend with friend. 

Pardon ! I '11 open you that lock of ours. 
You do not know the trick, — you pull this string : 
The lock is broken, — not the only thing 
That 's out of order in our Italy ; 
And there 's a trick to open every door. 
Ah, Fra Antonio, you'll excuse me now — 
Some other time — you see I 'm now engaged. 



THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 

Our men fought well at Morat! Thej fought like 

lions, boy, 
Like lions, that within their lair the hunter dares 

annoy. 
Ah ! now I 'm old, but I was then a boy as you 

are now. 
And this old tree was nothing but a bit of broken 

bough. 

Tis sixty good long years ago — how fast the years 

go by. 
Since we crushed, that dead]y day of June, the 

hosts of Burgundy ; 
The morning threatened thick with cloud, a weird 

and solemn gloom 
Hung o'er the town — the empty streets were silent 

as a tomb. 



THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 



1T3 



Save here and there where httle groups with sad 

and anxious brow, 
Old men, and boys, and women, were gathered 

talking low, 
Recounting news of Burgundy in words of doubt 

and fear. 
Or tales of our own mountain strength their trembling 

hearts to cheer. 

Some wrung their hands the while they spoke— in 

many a maiden's eye 
The slow tears brimmed, the pale mouth twitched 

in secret agony. 
And old men sadly shook their heads, while at 

their mother's side 
Children were puUing at their gowns, and asking 

why they cried ? 

Sad o'er us hung the sullen sky, — our hearts were 
dark with gloom. 

When suddenly the cannon's peal, with heavy muf- 
fled boom, 



174 THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 

Rolled dullj smiting on the Heart, that for a mo- 
ment stilled, 

Stopped in the breast, then wildly* like a hurried 
drum-beat thrilled. 

'Twas then, ere rang their battle-crj, our brothers 

in the field 
Bared their stern brows, and on the earth to ask 

God's blessing kneeled ; 
And Hans Von Halhvyll lifted, while all were 

silent there, 
Mid the thunder voice of cannon, the still, small 

voice of prayer. 

The heavens hung low and gloomy above them lowly 

bowed. 
But as they prayed the sudden sun broke through 

the shattered cloud 
And flashed across their bended ranks, and Hall- 

wyll from his knee. 
Sprang shouting — Up ! behold, God hghts the way 

to victory ! 



THE BATTLE OP MORAT. 175 

All, why was I not with them ? why was I doomed 
to stay, 

An idle boy to range along the ramparts all that 
day ? 

The cannon thrilled my startled blood — the Lands- 
horn shrilly cried. 

Flee from old men and women ! strike for freedom 
at om- side ! 

Alas, I could not flee from them ! half mad in 

heart and brain, 
I watched mth them the smoke-cloud chng along 

the distant plain ; 
We strained our eyes in vain, — we seemed to hear 

with nervous ears, 
The battle cry of Burgundy — the Eidgenossen's 

cheers. 

We fought with them in spirit in the tumult of the 

fight, 

We swung our swords with Hallwyll for Liberty 
and Right, 



176 THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 

With Walclman's band of rugged Swiss adown the 

hill we clove 
Through the shining helms of Burgundy, as through 

some tall pine grove 

Our avalanches thunder — We crushed them to the 

earth, 
We swept them from the hill-side with a wild 

exultant mirth — 
We slid upon their horsemen, and hurled them to 

the lake 
In terror and confusion — as the landshdes when 

they break 

Adown our mountain gorges, — in a heap of steel 

and blood. 
And shattered cuirasses and helms, they rolled 

into the flood ; 
Their hands that gleamed with diamonds in vain they 

lifted high, 
As the red wave bubbled over them, and drowned 

their fearful cry. 



THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 177 

We rushed mth old Von Hertenstein, his white 

hair streaming free, 
Where Hallwyll battled with the pride of knightly 

Bui'gnndy ; 
With the mountain force of stout Lucerne we 

sheared them from the plain, 
And mowed their glittering sheaves of spears, like 

fields of autumn grain! 

What served their Orders then to them, their proud 
and knightly blood? 

It stained the grass and lay in pools amid the 
trampled mud ; 

Their jewelled chains we scattered — and on gleam- 
ing breast and brain. 

Our great swords ratthng in their ears played 
Liberty's refrain. 

Leap! baffled Duke of Burgundy, — leap on thy 

swiftest steed! 
The Bear of Berne is after thee — spur at thine 

utmost need ! 

12 



178 THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 

Plunge in that reeking, quivering flank, thy golden 

spur, and flee 
Till his nostrils gush with blood and steam ^ 

Lucerne is hunting thee. 

Leave, leave upon the hill-side jour twenty thousand 

slain. 
Leave in the lake your heaps of dead, its waves 

mth gore to stain. 
Speed ! speed ! and when night darkens down. — 

blown, beaten, blasted, stand. 
With only thirty ghastly horsemen left of all your 

band. 

Such hope as this was thrilling us the while we 

leaned and gazed. 
With clenching hands, and young fierce eyes, and 

cheeks that hotly blazed ; 
But oft the fear of dread defeat, and conquest 

pouring do^vn 
Above our murdered, shattered ranks to deluge all 

the town 



THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 179 

With rapine and ^^dth ravage, knocked against our 

hearts with dread ; 
We heard the crackHng rafters crash above our fated 

head, 
We saw the red flames hck the air and glare against 

the skj. 
And 'mid the screams of women rang the clash of 

soldiery. 

At last the distant thunder ceased — and as w^e 
stramed our eyes 

We saw above the road's far ridge a Httle dust- 
cloud rise ; 

And on it came, and on, and on, upon the dry 
white road. 

Until a dark and moving spot like a running figure 
showed. 

News from the field ! what news, what news ? — 

alas, our brothers fly ! 
No, no, he waves a branch of lime — that tells of 

Victory. 



180 THE BATTLE OF MORAT. 

He staggerSj wounded, on, he reels, he famts be- 
side the gate ; 

Speak ! speak ! — he cannot speak — and jet 'tis 
agony to wait. 

We gather round, as through the street with reel- 
ing, staggering pace, 

He falls along — and panting, points towards the 
market place. 

There, while the blood starts from his mouth, he 
waves the branch on high, 

And with a last faint shout expires, exclaiming, 
Victory. 

That branch of lime we planted in the spot where- 
on he fell, 

And there it took its root, and throve, and spread 
its branches well. 

And you shall sit beneath its shade, as now we 
sit, when I 

Am dust — and say, ''My Grandsire brought that 
branch of Victory." 



THE PINE. 

Aloxe, without a friend or foe, 
Upon the rugged cliff I stand 
And see the valley far below 

Its social world of trees expand ; 
A hermit pine I muse above, 
And dream and wait for her I love, 
For her, the fanciful and free 
That brings my purest joy to me. 

Oft dancing from the laughing sea 
When morning blazes on my crest. 

All wild with life and gaycty 

She springs to me with panting breast. 

Her sun-spun ringlets loosely blown. 



182 THE PINE. 

And eyes that seem the dawn to OAvn, 

She greets me with impetuous air 

And shakes the dew-drops from mj hair. 

At midnight as I stand asleep, 

While constellations stream above, 
I hear her up the mountain creep 

With sighs and whispers full of love : 
There in my arms she gently lies. 
And breathes mysterious melodies. 
And with her childhke winning ways 
Among my leaves and branches plays. 

Heaped in the winter's snowy shroud, 

With icy fingers to each limb. 
Or drenched by summer's thunder-cloud, 

Of her, and her alone, I dream ; 
And where the trees are bending low. 
And the broad lake with crisped flow. 
Darkens its face despite the smi, 
I watch her through the valley run. 



THE PINE. 183 

Sometimes when parched in summer noon, 
She brings me odors from the east, 

And draws a cloud before the sun 
And fans me into peaceful rest. 

In mj siesta while I drowse 

She rustling shps amid my boughs. 

And teases me, the while that I 

In dreamy whispers make reply. 

Sometimes as if m fierce despair, 
The tears of passion on her face, 

With tempest locks and angry air 

She round me flings her wild embrace. 

And sobs, and moans, and madly storms, 

And struggles in my aching arms 

Until the wild convulsion past 

She falls away to sleep at last. 

And if my fate at length ordain 
Tliis fallen trunk of mine to bear 



184 THE PINE. 

Some stately vessel o'er the main, 

I know she '11 not forget me there. 
And oft the sailor mid the gale, 
Above my corse shall hear her wail 
And sob with tears of agony, 
Far out on the Atlantic sea. 



VENICE. 

There he lies, stabbed by your dagger ! 

Ah ! 'tis too late for remorse, now, 
Will all your weeping and kind words 

Give back the life to his corse, now ? 
'Tis my heart's blood on your point there, 

Fling it away I implore you, — 
Mad, rash Peppino ! I hate you 

As much as I used to adore you. 

Ah, yes! the old man provoked you! 

What of it? Here when he caught us 
All looked so wrong — He knew nothing — 

And — see where one wild act has brought us. 
He was my Father — my Father — 

'Tis well that you 're silent ! what words now 



186 VENICE. 

Can bridge o'er the crime that disparts us, 
Or mend again Life's broken chords, now ? 

See ! that white rose which I gave you 

Is spotted with red blood — ah, heaven ! 
Every thing's lost — How I loved you ! 

But such crime can be never forgiven ! 
Never ! no never ! his blood there 

Would cry out against us to blast us-^ 
Hark ! there 's a noise in the palace ! 

What was that gleam that shot past us ? 

Fly ! see the torches are coming, 

The steps on the pavement draw nearer ! 
Fly ! there's the voice of Alberto, 

And his scabbard rings clearer and clearer. 
There lies the gondola yonder, 

There, that black spot in the distance ; 
I '11 swear 'twas a bravo that struck him 

Before he could draw for resistance. 



VEXICE. 



187 



Fly, dearest, fly ! I '11 forgive you, 

Never upbraid you, but love you 
Dearer than ever, if only 

You'll fly. — Is there nothing ^\'ill move you? 
Y\j\ — Ah my God! ^tis too late now ! 

Their torches upon us are streaming, 
And there's blood on your face and your doublet — 

Ah God — is this real or dreammg ? 



THE LOCUST. 

Voice of Summer, hidden from the eye 
In the smmy tree's green privacy, 

Fiery locust — shrill again, again ! 
Drunk with sunshine — free of work and care, 
Happy idler, while the world is fair. 
Sing to us from out thy leafy lair. 

Praise of idleness to soothe our pain. 

What is hotter than that voice of thine ! 
Like a sunbeam stinging sharp and fine 

Through the inmost chambers of the brain ; 
Burning with the noonday's sultry glare. 
Shining dust and glassy simmering air. 
Skies of brass, blear sands, and deserts bare, 
> Is the fierce sirocco of thy strain. 



THE LOCUST. 189 

Though the blmcls are shut and all the room 
Shrouded softly m a cool, half gloom, 

Thy shrill voice the burning out- world sings, — 
While the fig-tree scratches at the bUnd, 
And the shadow of the grape spray, twined 
Round the balcony, with every wind 

Moves across the casement as it swings. 

Ah ! how sweet that dear Italian tune 
Thou art sinmni;; ! In the burninfi; noon 

Dreams the shepherd by the ruined tomb — 
On liis stafi" he leans — the while his sheep 
Round the wall's scant shadow nibbling creep, 
And the bearded goats rear up and peep 

Through the rifts and browse the poppy's 
bloom. 

In the fields the peasant feels the sun, 
Beatmg more intolerably down 

While thou singcst — as he panting stands. 



190 THE LOCUST. 

Breast high in the grain, or hid between 
Trellised vines that o'er their cany screen 
Topple, waving all their thick-leaved green. 
Plucking purple grapes with double hands. 

In the villa, checkered sun and shade 
Spot the broken moss-rough balustrade, 

And a silver net-work o'er the rail 
Flashes from the basin's quivering tides — 
Through the grass the sudden lizard slides 
Up the wall — and stands with tremulous sides, 

Gleamipg in his green enamelled mail. 

Now the sun the wasp-stung nectarine rots. 
Freckles o'er the rusty apricots, 

And distends the grape's thin skin with wine ; 
Now the glowing orange drops and breaks — 
Apples strain their tight and shinuig cheeks, 
And the smooth, green, lazy melon takes 

Its siesta in the coiling vine. 



THE LOCUST. 191 

Cbilclhoocl's voice is in thy fiery clirr, 
Olden summer memories thou canst stir, 

Golden visions we no more shall see : 
Thou canst bid the pictured past arise 
To the wanderer's heart, who dying hes. 
Far from home, and to his closing eyes 

Summon up its lost felicity. 

Yes ! he treads again the garden ground, 
"VMiich his childish feet once pattered romid ; 

AMiere the clustering oleanders tower: — 
Where, while rocking on its flowery stalk. 
Bees he prisoned in the hollyhock. 
Listening to their buzz of angry talk, 

As they struggled in the crumpled flower. 

There the smiflower's shield of bro^\Ti and gold. 
Flaming in the noonday gay and bold. 

Topples on its tall o'erburdened stem ; 
There the currants hang their ruddy beads — 
There its flower-globes the hydrangea spreads — 



192 THE LOCUST. 

There the spicy pink its odor sheds 
From its painted petals fringed hem. 

And a little hand is in his own 

Whose warm pressure never more is known, 

Who was taken in her childish bloom ; 
But those sunny curls still seem to float 
On the air the while he hears thy note, 
And her spirit wavers through his thought, 

Like a sunbeam in a darkened room. 

Voices full of wild and childish glee — 
Faces he again shall never see, 

Are around him w^hile thy voice he hears. 
And the ticking watch ticks not so loud 
In that silent room that shutters shroiid, 
And the cautious figure o'er him bowed. 

Through his dying eyelids sees the tears. 

Chirp away, then, happy summer guest. 
Bringing unto every human breast 



THE LOCUST. 193 



Summer visions, early memories, — 
Trill thy gauzy wings, and let us hear 
Through the noon's intensest atmosphere 
Thy fine clarion sounding shrilly clear, 

Praise of summer idleness and ease. 

Castel Gandolfo, August, 1852. 



13 



BETWEEN TWELVE AND ONE. 

After the merry Twelve's trochaic, 

Often I watch alone 
The smouldering log, with its coal-mosaic 

Like the antique pavement stone — 
The flame-tongues licking — the sharp clock ticking 

On to the solemn One. 

The jesters are gone, the play is over, 

The ghosts alone remain ; 
A song and a sigh together hover 

Over the dreaming brain ; 
To visions tender my soul I surrender. 

And sweet memorial pain. 

The wine in the half-quaffed glass is gleaming — 
And into the stifled air 



BETWEEN TWELVE AND ONE. 195 

The smoke of the blown-out candle is streammg, 

And empty is every chair, — 
And never, ah! never, mth all our endeavor. 

Will the guests again be there. 

Thus, when the Twelve go out and leave me. 

And every voice has ceased, 
I wait for the One that comes to shrive me 

Like a single mournful priest. 
To list to the lesson of sad confession. 

By the last guest at the feast. 

Were we all wrong that round the table 

Laughed with a merry heart, 
And drank Life's bright mne while we were able, 

Playing the gayest part — 
Because with the morrow cometh sorrow. 

And tears from the eyehds start? 



TO J— S — . 

There sounds the drum in the street, 

And the soldiers are marching by, 
And the trumpet sounds, — but thy Uttle feet 

Are still — and thy joyous cry 
Will never that marching greet. 

Oh ! never, never, again ! 
Nor thy sunny form at the window stand 

To list to that martial strain ; 
Yet I cannot but think I shall hear thy voice. 

Though I know the thought is vain. 

I think of thee often as gone 

For only a summer's day, 
In these earthly gardens laughing to run 

With thy friends at thy human play. 



TO J — . s — . 197 

I dream, when the day is done 
I shall hear thy foot on the stair, 

And welcome thee back with thine innocent face 
And thy frank, pure, noble air, 

And kiss thee again, and see thee again. 
Till the dream is like despair. 

Up in a sminier field, 

I know thou art playing now. 
And a purer day to thine eyes unsealed. 

And a Hght on thine angel brow, — 
And over and over again 

I say, — ''He is happier now. 
He never will sufier the pain 

That is knittmg this human brow. 
But ah! for us who must here remain 

How shall we bear it — how?" 

" There is the empty chair 

"Where he always used to sit. 
But his little figure no more is there, 



198 TO J — . s — . 

A ghost now sits in it. 
It sits, and it will not rise 

To leave it a moment's space — 
Forever there in the empty place ; 

I see through my streaming eyes 
The shadowy shape of that noble grace 

That has gone into the skies. 

" The little stubbed-out shoes 

That he always used to wear, 
The httle dress, with its pockets filled 

With his trifles, is lying there — 
How living to me they seem." 

And I gaze at them, and gaze 
As if in a sort of dream, 

Recalling the vanished days 
When he sported in them by hill and stream, 

All the happy summer days. 

My little beloved boy! 

Even where thou art, in heaven, 



TO J — . s — . 199 

There never can be a purer joy 

Than thou to us hast given ; 
Who never once made us grieve 

Till the sad, dark angel came 
And opened the heaven-gates to receive 

Thy spirit's vestal flame, 
And thy human tongue no more would speak 

When we called thy beloved name. 

KoME, Dec. 1854. 



THE BROKEN HARP. 

It was a harp that 'neath the poet's hand 

In earher happier days 
Gave forth such wondrous tones, that all the land 

Re-echoed praise. 

A cherub's head looked out above the wires, 

Whose nerves, so sensitive, 
Responded to the singer's wild desires, 

And seemed to live. 

The shghtest touch called forth its music then. 

Wild, sorrowing, pensive, gay, 
Howe'er 'twas touched, to hearts of maids and men 

It found its way. 



THE BEOKEN HARP. 201 

Oft to the old sweet air of love it thrilled, 

Oft in the hall at night 
Raag, while the wine-cup on the board was spilled, 

In mad delight. 

Behold it now ! how time, neglect, abuse 

Ha~^e spoiled that cherub brow; 
Its strings, half shattered and half hanguig loose. 

Have no chords now. 



And when the singer plays, as play he mil, 

Among these jarring strings, 
Ah ! what a sound of horror, wild and shrill. 

The least touch brings. 



There in the corner of the hall it stands. 
Cracked, stained with blood and wine, 

The harp that yielded to those youthful hands 
Sounds half divine. 



AUNT EACH EL'S STORY. 

With booming hum the pertinacious bee 
Goes beating here and there, the butterfl/ 
Drifts idly on the wind, the feathery buds 
Are dangling from the willow's yellow cwigs. 
Its limp, green fingers the horse-chestnut spreads, 
The daring tulip in the garden nods, 
And from the centre of its painted cup 
Thrusts its black tongue. The Spring returns 

again 
With musical breezes and the trill of birds. 
And furrows dark, fringed by the young grain's 

green, 
And thickening hedges where at height of noon 
The thin air simmers, and the wakened flies 
Begin to wheel and whisper in the warmth. 



203 



'Tis May again — but how unlike the May 
Of years ago — of that young May of hfe 
Wlien aimless as a summer cloud, the heart, 
Freighted with light and touched with roseate hues, 
Sailed far above the sordid cares of earth 
In the pure heaven of feeling. Yes, 'tis May, 
Not the old May ; for May is changed to must 
Since those old times, when love and hope looked 

out 
Of the heart's windows — when we both were girls 
In our first freedom. Yet not all these years 
Have cloven our hearts asunder — in the loam 
Of early memories our friendship roots — 
Though1>-interlaced like these two branching elms. 

Dear memories ! lofty as the " Silverhorns," . 
AVhose spotless heights into the blue sky pierce 
To play with morning, — yet not cold and bare 
xis those steep splendors, but with tender grass 
And flowers o'ergrown, like to those lower slopes 
Where tinkle the faint cow-bells, and long notes 



204 AUNT Rachel's story. 

Of the far shepherd's horn calhng his herds 

Float o'er the air-abysses — pastures fair 

Are they to us, serene although so sad, 

And brooded over by a thoughtful haze, 

Where herds of sweet thoughts wander far above 

Life's lower valley lying in the shade. 

Gone are the blossoms of our Young Romance — 
Alas ! the very leaves are almost gone, 
Yet through the branches we can clearly see 
Heaven's light that once was hidden by their 
wealth. 

At moments only can we feel how far 
Our youth lies from us — as we drift along 
All things drift with us — 'tis but now and then 
Some sudden contrast screams to us the truth. 

With some such thought as this, an hour ago 
I saw our dear old friend and hostess here, 
With her starched widow's cap, prim snowy ruff, 



205 



And sombre dress, walk staidly down the path 
And pause beneath the elms — then reaching up, 
Pluck from the lilac hedge a fragrant bunch 
Wet with the morning — rain its dew away 
With a quick shake — and slowly pass along. 
I wondered with what thought she smelled that 

bunch 
Of lilac ? for I smelled my youth in it. 
The flower, her movement, to my mind recalled, ' 
How suddenly, the time when we were girls. 
I saw her young, slight form, the happy face 
Laugliing through golden hair, and youth's hght step 
That spurns the ground it clings unto at last. 
Swift as a shuttle flies, the vision passed 
But left behind in the dark weft of thought 
Its brilhant thread that on the sombre ground 
Conspicuous showed : the Past and Present clashed 
Like two sweet bells that are not m accord. 
I saw at once as m a magic glass. 
This sad, subdued, and overwearied woman. 
And the young, gay, impetuous, laughing girl. 



206 AUNT Rachel's story. 

You only knew her when her youth was past, 
But not the same was she in face or mind, 
As in those days when Love and Passion throbbed 
Across her eloquent cheeks, (like a swift hand 
Across a mystic harp,) and struck a fire 
In those wild eyes, that now are all so calm. 
What zest, what brilliancy was in her wit — 
What rehsh of Life that would not be repressed 
In formal bounds — what mad dehght in fun — 
What salient girlhood. Love that early came, 
But deepened to an ample river depth 
The wild young torrent: unto those two hearts. 
To hers and Marion's, Life flowed on so smooth — 
They were so happy, fitting each to each 
In taste and temper hke two clasping hands — 
That there seemed nothing left to ask of Fate, 
It had not given. Oft and oft we said, 
Beholding them — " Such fortune sometimes comes 
At happy moments and to. happy souls. 
To give a footing to those climbing dreams 
The sneering world calls vaporous, foolish, false. 



AUNT RACHEL'S STORY. 207 

And in the world of facts to keep alive 
A wise belief in visionary things." 

Glad was their horoscope — no evil star 
Foreboded danger when he said good-bye, 
And parted as he thought for three short months 
Across the ocean. Ah! how blind we were 
Who thought that Fate would always brim their 

hearts, 
As it had brimmed them. Tremble ye who have 
The Samian Ring ; oh ! ask not too much luck ! 
And love's perfection breaks so easily ! 
One drop of poison cracks a Venice glass. 

Three months he said — those three months slowly 



And month on month went following in their 

track. 
And year on year for three long years — no Avord 
Breaking the dreadful silence — no report 
Of life or death, when no report was death. 



208 AUNT Rachel's story. 

As one who borne along the rattlmg rails 
Dashes from sunlit plains, pure air, blue sky, 
Down a chill tunnel's gloomy dripping cliffs, 
She shot from life to death — nor felt at first. 
After such glad excess of love and light. 
The dim faint lamp left burning in its stead ; 
But yet as time went on her eye grew used 
To that more solemn atmosphere of grief. 
And patience served her in the place of love. 

Youth suffers sharply but not long — it bends 
Before the storm, as the young birch-tree bends 
And then springs back. Yet sorrow leaves behind 
A poison drop no art can purge away 
That taints our joy — that kills our confidence. 
The glad, unthinking trust of youth, once crushed, 
Is crushed forever. — So it was with her ; 
Joy, which before she owned, seemed now but 

lent ; 
She trembled while she held the commonest gift 
Of daily fortune, and within herself 



AUXT RACHEL'S STORY. 209 

Shrunk up ; a still secluded life she lived, 
A life of memory, books, and household cares. 

Years went — and love's sweet memories were 
liid, 
Like playthings that a mother fondly hoards 
Of her lost child, long wept in secret o'er, 
And sadly visited with grief that time 
Made tenderer ever, till it drew at last 
A scarcefelt veil of shadow o'er her thought. 

Her hope wTcS smothered in her heart, not 
dead. 
How oft a sudden noise would make her start. 
And bring a quick flush in her cheek, — hoAv oft 
Of winter nights, when we beside the blaze 
Sat cheerful, would she leave the fireside group 
If the wind soughed too loudly in the trees. 
Or shook the windows with its gusts of rain. 
How oft she went, without apparent cause, 
And gazed at twihght down the avenue, 
14 



210 AUNT Rachel's story. 

Like one expecting something — and at times, 
How fixed to go, despite the cold and rain, 
Alone, to take the letters from the post. 

Oft at her father's fireside came a friend. 
Older by many years, refined in thought, 
Of generous heart and gentle in his mien, 
With quiet talk of nature and of art, 
He cheered her fancies, bore her oft away 
From the dull present to historic times. 
By Fancy led, she trod on other shores. 
Paced galleries thronged by pictured pageantry 
Or marble life — or breathed from terraces 
Dark orange groves, where sang the nightingale 
On Alban slope or high Fiesole 
By old Boccaccio's villa ; — oft she slipped 
In her black gondola 'neath carven walls 
Of shadowy palaces, or in twilight blaze 
Beheld St. Marco's glittering crust of gold ; — 
Through the wild gorges of the Alps he bore 
Her visionary footsteps, thrilled her heart 



211 

With tales of terror on those glacial heights 
Where climbs the chamois, or^ the toiirbillon 
Drives its white whirlpool down the thunderous 

steeps ; 
Across the desert, up the slumberous Nile 
She journeyed where the fernlike palm-trees grow, 
Throwing their shadow on the blear white tombs, 
Or where black Egypt, with its palms outspread 
On its close knees, in marble sadness sits. 
Or further on into the land of dreams. 
Broke the pomegranate on Arabian ground. 
And trod the city of Sheherazade. 

The spoils of travel hung upon his walls 
Or crammed portfolios, over Avhich they turned 
For hours, delighted — and her thoughts this way 
Acquired a happier bias: oft they walked 
Along tliis road, Avhere tangled blackberries net 
The loose piled wall, or late in the afternoon 
I 've seen them cross the yellow-hghted fields. 



212 AUNT Rachel's story. 

You know his house, built in the olden time, 
Its spacious rooms — its entries large and broad, 
Where the old clock ticked ever on the stairs, 
And that fair prospect from the windows seen ; 
I see it yet. There lies the flat, green marsh 
On which the o'er-brimming river at neap tides 
Spreads its broad silver, and where lightning- 
flies 
Flash all night long. There slope the hills beyond, 
Besprinkled with white houses and dark groves. 
Along whose base the white snake of the train 
Steals vanishing — and nearer at my feet. 
Upon the lawn's short grass at anchor lie 
Great shadows, tethered to the spreading foot 
Of lofty elms that swing their pendant boughs. 
Above the spring-fed pond tall dark-haired pines. 
Lone lingering sachems of their forest tribe. 
Grouped as in council, whisper to the breeze 
Their mournful memories. There in early frost 
Amid their darkness gleamed with yellow fire 



213 



Some slim white birches : — there the sumac 

glowed 
And showed its velvet cones, while o'er broad 

fields 
The fine oats rippled, and tall masts of maize 
Waived their green flags and spilled their yellow 

silk. 

Such was the scene through which they wandered 
oft 
And talked of men and books — his heart the while 
Absorbing love — as flowers take from the light 
Their color, slowly, mthout suddenness. 
And one late afternoon returning home, 
That love found utterance — unto her alone 
His words came with surprise, and fired a train 
Of smouldering thoughts, blind hopes, dear memories 
Half pain, half joy, a dim confused heap, 
Pushed out of sight, yet wanting but a touch 
To blaze through every ward of heart and brain. 



214 ' AUNT RACHEL'S STORY. 

'Twas the old story — love, at first refused, 
Renewed its claim and friendship, second best. 
With admirable reasoning pressed its suit ; 
Worldly advantage, wealth, position, urged 
Their present claims above a hopeless love, 
And after tossing to and fro in doubt. 
Reluctant still, yet able to oppose 
Only a feeling deemed fantastical, 
A hope (that floated ever like a buoy 
Above the wreck of all her life and love,) 
That Marion might be living, might return 
To make her his, she yielded her consent. 

I was her bridesmaid — tremblingly and pale 
She stood before the altar, when she pledged 
Her heart to his ; but when the rites were o'er 
She grew composed — a flush of color came 
Into her delicate cheek, and, wath a smile. 
She bade us all good-bye — as if she said, 
The Past is Past, welcome the Future now. 



AUNT Rachel's story. 215 

Sitting beside her when a month had passed, 
In pleasant talk of friends, which deepening on, 
Touched on her early grief, and the lost hopes 
That lit her morning — all at once our ears 
Were startled by quick steps upon the walk ; 
She trembled — I confess I trembled too, 
Touched by a strange forebodmg — neither spake — 
But a quick flush ran over her pale face. 
Then vanished — hke those summer-li^htninai; heats 
That lift along the horizon's evening edge. 
And glow an instant but to leave more weird 
The after darkness. In a moment more 
The door swung open, and the well-known form 
Of Marion stood before us : — with a shriek 
She started, staggered forward, while a look 
That haunts me still of wild and deep despair 
Convulsed her face, — and flinging up her arms. 
Muttered, "I knew it I— Ah! too late," and 
swooned. 

We bathed her temples, bore her to a couch. 
And long we hung above her, ere the life 



216 AUNT Rachel's story. 

Came back to her white cheeks. Alas ! that 

hour 
Of agony, which followed when her sense 
Again returned — what explanations wild — 
What bursts of tears, that smothered the thick 

voice, — 
With silences more dreadful, like those deep 
And dread crevasses leading down to death 
Smoothed over by the treacherous snow. What 

fierce 
Self accusations and complaints of Fate 
These two hearts uttered ! But at last a calm 
Came over them, a calm like that which comes 
After the foundering of a glorious hope, 
When all alone in the great sea of Time 
We find ourselves upon a drifting raft. 

You know his story ; tempest, war, and chance 
Conspired to mar his plans ; — a shipwreck first, 
Then cruel waiting for another ship. 
And long imprisonment on hostile shores, — 
These kept him back and ruined all his life. 



AUNT Rachel's story. 217 

Death had been almost better than return, 
Her mind was braced to that — but every hour 
To own the terrible presence of a thought, 
Half of remorse and half of vain regret. 
That would intrude, a ghost at every feast. 
This was more hard to bear for him and her. 
So, when he died, a weight from off her heart 
Seemed lifted, and she grew more still and calm. 

And now, long years — long, serious, thoughtful 

years 
Have strewn with their dead leaves her life and 

ours. 
And life has lost those early passionate joys. 
That sang and fluttered in Spring's blossomy boughs 
Like these gold orioles that among the elms 
Quiver like living fruit. — Well, age has brought 
Perhaps its compensation. Youth's gay days 
Hung round the walls of memory have gained 
The tone of rare old pictures and a fine 
Ideal hue, that time alone can give. 



218 AUXT Rachel's story. 

But the gate creaks — our friend is coming back. 
Say, would you think, to see that serious face, 
With its quaint smiles — to hear that sharp, high 

tone 
Half-jesting, half sarcastic, she had known 
Such strange romance as this when she was young ? 



AT DIEPPE. 

The shiverins; column of the moonlii>:ht lies 

Upon the cnynbhng sea ; 

Down the lone shore the flying curlew cries 

Half humanly. 



With hoarse, dull wash the backward dragging surge 

Its raucid pebbles rakes, 
Or swelling dark runs down with toppling verge. 

And flashino; breaks. 



The light-house flares and darkens from the chiF, 

And stares with lurid eye 
Fiercely along the sea and shore as if 

Some foe to spy. 



220 AT DIEPPE. 

What knoAving tliouglit, oh, ever moaning sea, 

Haunts thy perturbed breast — 
What dark crime weighs upon thy memory 

And spoils thy rest ? 

Thy soft swell lifts and swings the new-launched yacht 

With pohshed spars and deck. 
But crawls and grovels where the bare ribs rot 

Of the old wreck. 



Oh, treacherous courtier 1 thy deceitful lie 

To youth is gayly told. 
But in remorse I see thee cringingly 

Crouch to the old. 



FAIRY- LAND. 

(for e. m. s.) 

Whex first into Fairy-land I went 

I was so liappy and so content, 

For a little Fairy carried me there 

Who had large blue eyes and golden hair. 

'Twas a beautiful w^ood, with great high trees 
That scattered gold leaves as they shook in the 

breeze, 
Where the Oriole flashed, and the blue Jay screamed, 
And the trees and- the skies in the smooth lake 

dreamed. 

And there w^e wandered about, and played 
On the crisping leaves in the sun and shade ; 
And she carried me where the gleaming brooks 
Braided their brown hair over the rocks. 



222 FAIRY-LAND. * 

And she told me where sweet nuts were found, 
In the house of the squirrel under ground ; 
And she showed me a great flat mossy stone 
That we ranged our acorn-cups upon. 

There Ave played party down hi the glen, 

And made beheve ladies and gentlemen ; 

And put on their airs, and talked of the weather — 

Oh ! we were both so happy together. 

Our cream and our sugar were only pretend. 

But we found wild strawberries there without 

end. 
And these on a great leaf-dish w^e set. 
With an arum for pitcher, all dewy wet. 

We had at our tea-parties many a friend. 

But they, like the sugar and cream, w^ere ' pretend,' 

So we made beheve help them, and pour out their 

cup. 
And their berries and cake we ourselves eat up. 



FAIRY-LAND. 223 

And there a garden we dug with a stick, 
And planted with flower-seeds ever so thick, 
And stuck all the wild flowers we found, in it too, 
And dug them up daily to see how they grew. 

Sometimes both our children we hushed into bed. 
And wove wreaths of woodbine to wear on our 

head, 
And barberries for ear-rings we tied on with strings 
And went to make visits to queens and to kings. 

Oh ! 'twas so pleasant there in the wood. 
How glad I should be to go back, if I could — 
But the fairy returns not that carried me there, 
And the place without her would be dreary and 
bare. 



THE VIOLET 



Oh ! faint delicious spring-time violet, 

Thine odor, like a key. 
Turns noiselessly in memory's wards to let 



A thought of sorrow free. 



The breath of distant fields upon my brow 

Blows through that open door. 
The sound of wind-borne bells more sweet and low, 

And sadder than of yore. 

It comes afar from that beloved place, 

And that beloved hour. 
When Life hung ripening in Love's golden grace, 

Like grapes above a bower. 



THE VIOLET. 225 

A spring goes singing through its reedy grass, 

The lark sings o'er my head 
Drowned in the sky — Oh pass, ye visions, pass! 

I would that I were dead 1 — 

Why hast thou opened that forbidden door 

From which I ever flee ? 
Oh, vanished Joy ! Oh Love, that art no more. 

Let my vexed spirit be ! 

Oh violet! thy odor through my brain 
Hath searched, and stung to grief 

This sunny day, as if a curse did stain 
Thy velvet leaf. 



15 



THE TORRENT. 

In wild exuberant joy from thy mountain home 

Thou earnest in early spring, 
Impetuous, breaking along in foam 

And gladdening every thing. 

What fulness of life ! what scorn of obstacles ! 

What pride that young heart filled ! 
The maiden-hair trembled, and all the purple bells 

With joy and fear were thrilled. 



Over the drudging, laboring wheel with a shout 
Thou wentest, with streaming hair. 

Thy bounty of diamonds scattering all about 
On the aspens flickering there. 



THE TORREXT. 227 

The maiden smiled as she saw thy smmy flow, 
And the youth smiled back in pride, 

But the miller gazed at both with an anxious brow 
As he shook his head and sighed. 



I saw thee later — all shrunken to a thread, 

When summer's joy was flown, 
Steahng slowly along thy wasted bed. 

Fretting at every stone. 

The leaves of the maiden-hair were crisp and dry, 

The purple bells were gone — 
Lonely the maiden wept for the days gone by, 

And her cheek was shrunk and wan. 



The broken mill-wheel went no longer round — 

The miller's grave was there ; 
Only a bird was singing, whose glad, sweet sound 

Brought to the heart despair. 



T J. S. 

"Better is the sight of the eye than the wandering of the 
desire." — 6 Ecclesiastes, ix. 

I YIELD thee unto higher spheres, 
I bend my head and say, " Thy will 

Not mine be done," though bitter tears 
The while my eyelids fill. 

I know thou hast escaped the blight 
That wilts us here, and entered now 

To perfect day — though in the night 
Bereft of thee we bow. 



And yet thy little sunny life 
Was beautiful as it was brief; 

It was not vexed by pain or strife. 
It knew but little grief. 



TO J. s. 229 

The sunshine from our house is gone, 
And from our hearts their peace and joy ; 

We feel so terribly alone 
Without thee — dearest boy ! 

Thou mad'st us feel how very fair 

God's earth could be, and taught us love ; 

And m Hfe's tapestry of care 
A golden figure wove. 

Brave as we will our hearts to bear, 
Grief will not wholly be denied ; 

The ineffectual dykes we rear 
Go down before its tide. 

We lie all prostrate — cannot feel 
God's love — we only cry aloud, 

" Oh, God ! oh, God ! " for all things reel, 
And God hides in a cloud. 



230 TO J. s. 

We blindly wail, for we are maimed 

Beyond repair, until at last 
He lifts us up — all bleeding, lamed, 

And shattered by the blast. 

He asks, '^ And would you wish him back, 
Whom I have taken to my joy, — 

Drag downward to Life's narrow track 
Your httle spirit boy ? " 

''No! no!" the spirit makes reply — 
" Not back to earthly chance and pain ; ' 

" Yet ah ! " the shattered senses cry, 
'' Would he were here again." 

• He w^as so meshed within our love 

That all our heart strings bleeding lie. 

And all fond hopes we round him wove 
Are now but agony. 



TO J. s. 231 

Yet let us suffer — he is freed, 

And on our tears a bridge of light 

Is built hj God, his steps to lead 
To joys beyond our sight. 



Rome, Dec. 1853. 



C OUPLET S. 

I. 

To each his separate work ; the ox to drag the 

plough, 
The bird to sing his song upon the blossomy bough. 

I do not ask the grain and hay your acres yield, 
If I may pluck the flower you trample in your 
field. 

How perfect nature is ! the sun, and cloud, and rain 
Give me a little song, and ripen all your grain. 



II. 



SHAKESPEARE. 

Our nearness value lends to trivial things and slight, 
But only distance gives to lofty ones their height. 



COUPLETS. 233 

The Pyramids to those beneath them look not 

high, 
But as we go from them thej tower into the sky. 

So thy colossal mind, in time's perspective seen. 
Still rises up and up with more majestic mien. 

III. 

Strive not to say the whole ! the Poet, in his Art, 
Must intimate the whole, and say the smallest part. 

The young moon's silver arc her perfect circle tells. 
The hmitless within Art's bounded outline dAvells. 

Of every noble w^ork the silent part is best. 

Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed. 

Each act contains the Life, each work of Art the 

AYorld, 
And all the planet laws are in each dew-drop 

pearled. 



234 COUPLETS. 

Of single stones is built the temple's Grecian state. 
Yet should the poet not its stones enumerate. 

The lizard gliding o'er the Pyramid's huge cone, 
Knows not the Pyramids, but only every stone. 



Subservient to the form all details must be brought, 
All images be slaves to one despotic thought. 



IV. 

We of our age are part, and every thrill that 

wakes 
The tremulous air of Life, its motion in us makes. 

The imitative mass mere empty echo give. 
As walls and rocks return the sound that they 
receive. 

Eut as the bell that high in some cathedral swings, 
Stirred by wdiatever thrill with its own music 



COUPLETS. 235 

So finer souls give forth to each ^dbrating tone 
Impinging on their Hfe — a music of their own. 

V. 

All Arts are one, howe'er distributed thej stand, 
Verse, tone, shape, color, form, are fingers on one 
hand. 

VI. 

Lift thou thyself above the accidents of life, 
With pain and joy alike be friends, abjuring strife. 

If in thy growing fields the tempest beat thy 

grain, 
See ! it hath blown disease from off the stagnant 

plain. 

If Friendship seize the sword, bare thou thy breast 

and wait. 
Love conquers Love, but Hate hath never conquered 

Hate. 



236 COUPLETS. 

Patient the wounded earth receives the plough's 

sharp share, 
And hastes the sweet return of golden grain to 

bear. 

The sea remembers not the vessel's rending keel, 
But rushes joyously the ravage to conceal. 

So, patient under scorn and injury abide, — 
Who conquereth all within may dare the world 

outside. 

vir. 
Why fear the critic's pen ; if dipped in gall it 

be 
It but corrodes itself, it cannot injure thee. 

Sound speech, howe'er severe, deem thou the 

surgeon's knife 
That cuts the cancer out and thereby saves the 

life. 



COUPLETS. 237 

Yet, let the surgeon heed, the flesh he takes oft 

hes 
So near the patient's heart, that taken thence, he 

dies. 

VIII. 

The okl because 'tis okl the fool will reverence — 
The new because 'tis new, to hun is void of sense. 

Leave him with feeble bow his pointless jeer to 

shoot ; 
The wise would understand before they would 

refute. 

Wlien sliding doAvn its rails the engine thunders, 

mark ! 
From every farm-house runs some foohsh cur to bark. 

IX. 

Yes, thrift is very good. Respect to men of thrift ! 
They stick to solid facts, and let the dreamer 
drift. 



238 COUPLETS. 

The earth their mother is, their heart unto her chngs, 
And since they Hve with her why should they covet 



They find in common hfe a present task to do, 
The distant and the dim let idle poets woo. 

Yet out of earth alone was no man ever made ? 
The imagination gives the very soul to Trade. 

The merchant schemes and dreams, with magic 

numbers plays. 
On speculation's wings he threads through fortune's 

maze. 

Across the patliless deep his ships like shuttles fly, 
And weave together lands by needs and luxury. 

With astrologic faith he on the stars relies, 
And ventures all his wealth to shifting winds and 
skies. 



COUPLETS. 239 

He trusts a needle's point, a few weak planks and 

chart, 
To bring an Eastern spice into a Western mart. 

What Faith in things unseen ! Hath any poet's 

dreams 
More fancy than your plain and sober merchant's 

schemes ? 

X. 

Live not without a friend ! The Alpine rock must 

own 
Its mossy grace or else be nothing but a stone. 

Live not without a God ! hoAvever low or hio-h, 
Li every house should be a window to the sky. 

XI. 

Herein the spirit's gifts are not hke those of 

clay — 
The spirit does not lose by what it gives away. 



240 COUPLETS. 



So at the candle's flame if we another hght, 
The first hath nothing lost of beautiful or bright. 



The lamp of human love like to the candle burns. 
Its life is but to give, it seeketh no returns. 

XII. 
As rooted to the rock the yearning sea-weed grows 
And sways unto the tide, and feels its ebbs and flows ; 

So unto Reason fixed, yet floating ever free 

In Feeling's ebb and flow the Artist's fife should be. 

XIII. 
How use and custom steal from fairest things their 

grace, 
And how privation makes us feel the vacant place. 

The open sky I breathed seemed not so sweet and 

pure 
Till I was doomed this damp, foul dungeon to endure. 



COUPLETS. 241 

I never knew, clear friend, your love's necessity, 
But by Death's chasm left where once you used 
to be. 

XIV. 

While we are young our youth too near for Art 

doth he — 
Our hfe a poem is, but for another's eye. 

Youth by projection knows how glorious manhood is, 
And manhood feels youth's charm by golden 
memories. 

Not in the present we the present charm can 

feel, 
But Memory and Hope have Beauty's Avondrous 

seal. 

Time smelts the dross away and leaves the ore 

alone. 
And in a magic ring it sets Ufe's opal stone. 

16 



242 COUPLETS. 

XV. 

In every leaf is seen the structure of the tree — 
In every drop, the earth — in man, society. 

Nought universal ere was spoken, thought, or done, 
That was not owed unto the private truth of one. 

X\\ nature is aldn — all parts of one vast mind. 
And universals we in individuals find. 

XVI. 

The scholar like a ship is filled with foreign store. 
Yet oft his life and thouo;ht are barnacled with lore. 



Sometimes rich fruit and wine he brmgs from 

lands unknown — 
And sometimes he returns all ballasted with stone. 



Nought in his mind or heart should dead and for- 
eign dwell — 
But change into himself like pearls within their shell. 



COUPLETS. 243 

Let him assimilate his knowledge as his food, 
This, unto feeling, thought ; as that, to flesh and 
blood. 

XVII. 

What strange and magic power in sympathy resides ? 
It doubles all our joys, our sorrows it divides. 



(How sweet, dear friend, to feel that I with thee 
may share 
Whatever hfe may brmg of thought, or hope, or 
care. 

Yet in his inmost self must each one stand alone. 
Be, think, decide, act, die, — a smgle separate one. 

XYIII. 

Pain of the devil is, with God is joy alone. 

And love's dehcious fruit hath not sin's bitter stone. 

Joy is life's natural flow, when feehngs meet no 

shock. 
And Sin the eddying whirl around some hidden rock. 



244 COUPLETS. 

When in the glow of love, the loved one at thy 



How broad thy being is — thy sympathy how wide. N 

Thy love illumes the world ; the beggar in thy 

way 
Gets silver now who got but curses yesterday. 

XIX. 

That dress of thine is made of many lives ; I see 
Upon thy coral there the diver's misery. 

Thy shawl is red with blood, for that the camel 

bled; 
The seamstress sewed her pain into thy lace's thread. 

The tortured worm gave up his tomb thy silk to 

make, 
The oyster bore his pearl of trouble for thy sake. 

The frolic kid was flayed thy snowy hands to hide, 
A thousand cochineals to paint thy ribbon died. 



COUPLETS. 245 

Thou wouldst not crush a worm, so gentle is thy 

heart, 
And yet, behold I how strange a paradox thou art. 

XX. 

The conscious Intellect the servant is of Art, 
The unconscious Phantasy performs the master's 
part. 

Despite the helm and sail the vessel will not go 
Howe'er we strive, until the breath of heaven shall 
blow. 

Love is the only key of knowledge as of Art, 
Nothing is truly ours but what we learn by 
heart. 

XXI. 

Like to the human frame, or like the spreading 

tree. 
So History grows and has its hve anatomy. 



246 COUPLETS. 

From age to age it groAvs, here lopped, and stunted 

there, 
And strives its perfect form of Liberty to wear. 

Ah ! what a wondrous voice of sorrow from it 

grieves, ^ 
As in the air of Time it shakes its myriad leaves. 

There sits the carrion crow of Hate, and croaks for 

Death, 
While Love's white dove lies torn and bleeding 

underneath. 

Shall that day never come when all its limbs shall 

shoot 
In peaceful freedom forth to blossom, leaf and 

fruit. 

When lifting perfect up its form unto the skies, 
The mnds amid its boughs shall weave their 
melodies. 



COUPLETS. 247 

XXII. 

I look into thine eyes, myself, dear love, to see, 
For all I am, and hope, is given mito thee.\ 

XXIII. 

Seek not to pour the world into thy little mould, 
Each as its nature is, its bemg must unfold. 

Enjoy the good, nor seek too much to criticize, 
Within the slag of vice the gold of mtue lies. 

Vice is not wholly vice, but virtue m the growth. 
And falsehood but the germ of undeveloped truth. 

Thy virtue is tliine own ; m others it may be 
The meanest vice that man can have — Hypocrisy. 

Thou art but as a string in life's vast sounding- 
board. 

And other strings as sweet will not with thine 
accord. 



248 COUPLETS. 

XXIV. 

An. inward faith alone can make our life sincere, 
And into Art that life transmuted should appear. 

Not of a trick or lie those fairest shapes are 

born, 
That seem like human souls that godhke forms have 

worn. 

The Greek in nature saw his gods half-hidden 

lurk. 
And copying nature, wrought liis gods into his 

work. 

XXV. 

Nature in circles moves round fixed and central 

laws. 
The spirit's spiral path a moving centre draws. 

The seed results the tree, the tree results the 

seed. 
Its ultimated fruit but to its root doth lead. 



COUPLETS. 249 

But thought strives ever up, beyond itself aspires, 
New forms and higher powers are born of its 
desires. 

Rest absolute is death ; rest relative alone 

To Nature must belong ; the soul must on and on. 

What askest thou of Death, but that the senses' 

door 
It shall unlock and let the spirit upward soar ? 

Soar on and up, its God projecting as it goes. 
Expanding into love, and joy, and peace — but 
not repose. 

In utter rest the soul could never fitly dwell. 
Debarred from upward growth — e'en Paradise were 
hell. 

XXVI. 

While work is only task we are apprentices ; 

The master docs his work with joy fulness and ease. 



250 COUPLETS. 

His labor is his joy, and not the prize it brings, 
And Nature, while he works, to him her secret 
sings. 

XXVII. 

Joy is the tone that sounds through nature's myriad 

vents. 
But Hate is man's alone, and man alone repents. 

Yet life hath nobler shapes than sorrows to beget, 
God gives us time to live, act, love, but not regret. 



For blighted fruit once borne the fruit-tree does 

not care, 
Nor gratulate itself on w^hat was sound and fair. 



So let us joyous hve — to-day to be and do, 
Nor care if good or bad once on our branches 
grew. 

There is no ruined life beyond the smile of heaven, 
And compensating grace for every loss is given. 



COUPLETS. 251 

The Coliseum's shell is loved of flower and vine, 
And through its shattered rents the peaceful planets 
shine. 

XXVIII. 

Nature allows not man his brother to exclude, 
She spreads her feast alike for fool, wise, bad and 
good. 

Each what he can may take, so much and nothing 

more — 
Yet nothing that each takes diminishes her store. 

Thj walls and gates may shut my feet from thy 

estate. 
Yet Fancy where she will treads scorning wall and 

gate. 

The acres of dead loam — the wood within the 

trees, 
Thou cravest these alone, so hast thou only these. 



252 COUPLETS. 

The poet poor, despised, who loiters dreaming by, 
Transmutes this dross to gold with wondrous 
alchemy. 

He owns the landscape there — the fine ethereal 

part ; 
For him the bird sings while he listens with his 

heart. 

For him the sunset paints — for him the free winds 

blow ; 
He takes the spirit there and lets the dead corpse go. 

Thy wealth sticks to the earth, a load thou canst 

not raise — 
His, light as thought and safe from death, he bears 

always. 

XXIX. 

We are but what we think, and must immortal be. 
Else whence hath come the thought of immortality ? 



COUPLETS. 253 



The limits of its sphere can nothing ere transcend, 
thou 
end. 



And thought roam where it will can never find its 



Around the soul one thought of nebulous glory 

clmgs, 
As Saturn is ensphered within its luminous rings. 

This pours upon our hfe its pure and lambent 

light, 
And brmgs its fullest joy when sorrow brings the 

night. 

XXX. 

The East for sweet luxurious ease and rest — 
For toil, and pain, and struggle is the West. 

The calm siesta, pipe, and soft divan 
With mild sensations, are for Eastern man. 

The fierce debate, the strife for place and power, 
The brain and nerve life is our Western dower. 



254 COUPLETS. 

With all our rush and toil we scarcely move, 
And lose the truest joy of living — love ! 

XXXI. 

Nature will ne'er repeat ; whatever she creates 
An individual is ; she never imitates. 

Eada life she separate makes, whate'er its class 

may be, 
And men are tones whose chord we call society. 

What thou hast done is fair — perchance for thee 

the best ; 
But yet there is for me a different behest. 

We drill all thoughts and acts to Fashion's monotone, 
But various Nature still abhors a unison. 



With her wide-ranging hand she modulates the 

keys. 
From seeming discord builds progressive harmonies. 



COUPLETS. 255 

If we refuse the tone, that God to each has given, 
The symphony is marred that earth plays mito 
heaven. 

XXXII. 

AYliere thou art strong and stout thy friend to thee 

will show — 
Where thou art weak alone is taught thee by thy foe. 

Therefore despise him not ; but 'neath his battle- 
axe 

See if thy armor rmg whole, sound, or 'neath it 
cracks. 

Though friend with flattery soothe, or foe stab 

through and through. 
Praise cannot save the False, nor malice kill the 

True. 

XXXIII. 

The Imperfect hath a charm the Perfect cannot 

own; 
From satisfaction Hope ungirds her flasliing zone. 



256 COUPLETS. 

No Perfect nature shapes — she only hints m each 
And tantahzes with her partly finished speech. 

XXXIV. 

The torch you turn to earth still upward lifts its 

flame, 
And so the soul looks up though turned to earth 
^ in shame. 



AT THE VILLA CONTI. 

What peace and quiet in this villa sleep ! 
Here let us pause, nor chase for pleasure on, 
Nothing can be more exquisite than this — 
Work, for the nonce farewell — this day we '11 give 
To fallow joys of perfect idleness. 

See how the old house lifts its face of hght 
Against the paUid olives that behind 
Throng up the hiU. — Look do^vn this vista's shade 
Of dark square shaven ilexes, where spirts 
The fountain's thin white thread, and blows away. 
And mark ! along the terraced balustrade 
Two contadine stoppmg in the shade, 
With copper vases poised upon their heads, 
How their red jackets tell against the green ! 
17 



258 AT THE VILLA CONTI. 

Old, all is old — what charm there is in age ! 
Do you believe this villa when 'twas new 
Was half so beautiful as now it seems ? 
Look at these balustrades of travertine, 
Had they the charm when fresh and sharply 

carved 
As now that they are stained and grayed with 

time 
And mossed with lichens, every grim old mask 
That grins upon their pillars bearded o'er 
With waving sprays of slender maiden-hair ? 
Ah no ! I cannot think it. — Things of art 
Snatch nature's graces from the hand of Time. 
Here will we sit and let the sleeping noon 
Doze on and dream into the afternoon, 
While all the mountains shake in opal light, 
Forever shifting, till the sun's last glance 
Transfigures with its splendor all our world. 

Hark ! the cicala crackles mid the trees. 
How shrilly 1 and the toppling fountain spills 



AT THE VILLA CONTI. 259 

The music of its silvery rain, how soft ! 

Into the broad clear basin — zigzag darts 

The sudden dragon-fly across, or hangs 

Poised in the sun with shimmer of glazed wings. 

And there the exquisite campagna lies 
Dreaming what dreams of olden pomp and war, 
Of Love, and Pain, and Joy that it has known ! 
Sadder, perhaps, but dearer than of yore, 
With wild-flowers overstrewn, like some loved grave ; 
Its silent stretches haunted by vast trains 
Of ghostly shapes, where stalks majestical 
Mid visionary pomp of vanished days. 
The buried grandeur of imperial Rome ; 
Moaned over by great winds that from the sea 
Sweep inland, and by wandering clouds of tears ; 
How it Hes throbbing there beneath the sun, 
So silent with its ruins on its breast ! 
There, far Soracte on the horizon piles 
Its lonely peak — and gazes on the sea ; 
There Leonessa couches in repose, 



260 AT THE VILLA CONTI. 

And stern Gennaro rears its purple ridge, 
And wears its ermine late into the spring. 
When all beneath is one vast lush of flowers, 
And poppies paint whole acres with one sweep 
Of their rich scarlet, and entangling vines 
Shroud the low walls, and drop from arch to 

arch 
Of the far-running lessening aqueducts 
On his broad shoulders still the imperial robe 
Of winter hangs — and leashed within his caves 
The violent Tramontana lies m wait. 

Dear, dear old Rome — well ! nothing is like 
Rome ; 
Others may please me, her alone I love. 
She is no place as other cities are — 
But like a mother and a mistress too. 
The soul of places, unto whom I give 
How gladly all my heart, and wish it more. 
That I might give more. After life with her. 
With her sweet counsel, tender grace, large thought, 



AT THE VILLA CONTI. 261 

And great calm beauty, all seems trivial. 
Ask me not why I love, nor comit her faults, 
Who ever gave a reason for his love ? 

Let not this day go by unconsciously; 
No ! let us taste it — taste it as it goes, 
Not gulp it at one draught like common wine, 
Eut taste each drop, and say, " how exquisite ! " 
Stay, stay with us, oh! dear and lovely day. 
Would we could hold you back forever here. 

What long sweet respiration of delight 
In these old places, and in this old world ; 
How dear this villa, with its crumbling pride. 
Its time-Avryed balustrades, its shadowy walks 
Through the thick ilexes — its fountain stairs 
DoAvn which the sheeted water leaps alive 
To heap the basin where the gold-fish hang. 
Not half so dear to generations gone, 
To those who planned the gardens and enslaved 
The free stream of the mountain here to pour 



262 AT THE VILLA CONTI. 

When loosened from its prison into light, 

Its mounting splendor and its cool sweet song 

As unto us, who after Time hath laid 

Its hand on all and given it a grace 

No newness ever owned — here he and muse. 

Here walked the Falconieri in their pride 
Centuries ago — here the Colonna came, 
Vittoria with them — Angelo himself. 
Gazing upon her as she gravely moved 
And sighing for her, while Fabrizio's sword 
Clanged on the gravel — here the D'Este came, 
From TivoH where o'er dark cypresses 
Their villa looks above the billowy land 
Of the Campagna ; — ah ! how sweet their names 
Sound, rousing pensive echoes in the heart. 
Here woman in her first young budding grace 
To manhood's earliest prime of passion pledged 
The faith of innocent love, the while their hearts 
Ran over into sweet Itahan words — 
Soft dropping vowels. They are now but dust ; 



AT THE VILLA CONTI. 263 

But yet their imaged life re-lives in us 

A charmed existence. Down such paths as these 

Stole Romeo to his Juliet, when the moon 

Looked at her quivering image in the cup 

Of such broad fountain ; — by such balustrade 

Fair Beatrice, her wit scarce sheathed in Love, 

Ran hke a lapwing close unto the ground ; — 

Under the shadow of such deep green woods 

Francesca read upon the fated day 

That Hves in Dante's rhyme ; — Petrarca walked 

Alone and thoughtful through such silent paths 

Embalming Laura in his amber song — 

Here Tasso roamed, and o'er such terraces 

That happy group of dark-eyed women sat. 

For whom Boccaccio told his charming tales. 

Oh ! sweet romantic memories, ye exhale 
Your odorous breath amid these sylvan shades 
To intoxicate the senses. Gentle forms 
Ye rise Hke visions here among the trees, , 
In fair procession. In the fountain's dim 



264 AT THE VILLA CONTI. 

And whispering murmur are your voices hid. 
Ye speak of Love — ye summon up again 
Blind, sweet sensations, feehngs dreamy, faint 
As the prophetic light round the young moon ; 
Wild hopes that overflow Life's parapets 
Rise at your voice, tempered and sobered down, 
And with a haze of sadness — sadness full 
Of tenderest joy and not to be exchanged 
For all those wilder raptures, rise again 
With trains of memories, forms that are no more 
And smiles of light that pierce Thought's shadowy 
wood. 

Ah ! were ye here with whom in Childhood's 

days. 
Or in the season of expanding thought 
I roamed and dreamed and shaped a thousand 

vague 
Delicious fancies — were ye at my side ! 
Yet no ! in vision only could we touch 
That Future which is Present now to me — 



AT THE VILLA CONTI. 265 

Present iii Time, but ah! how sadly changed 
From what we painted. Not the ocean drear, 
With its hhnd waste of washing, weltering waves 
Yawns now between us, — finer fine than thought 
Can ever trace, yet not to be o'er-reached, 
And vaster than the widest stretch of sea 
Is drawn between your hfe beyond and ours. 

Are these dreams nothing ? are these idle hours 
Loss to the soul ? Beheve it not, dear friend ! 
These fallow times em-ich our choicest powers 
And sweeten strength which else would groAV too 

hard. 
We will not take the joy we do not earn 
So vain are we — and yet these idle joys 
That nature ofiers we can never win — 
Out of her grace she gives, but not for pay. 
The charm of Beauty slips away from Work. 
So let us Hve to-day, not as the bee 
Bustling and busy at our nervous toil — 
(Of all God's creatures most I hate the bee. 



266 AT THE VILLA CONTI. 

Heartless and selfish, and intent on gain, 
Armed with a sting and banging rudely round 
With irritated noise among the flowers,) 
But float as lazy as the butterfly 
Whose idle wings beauty is glad to paint. 
The brother of the rose on which he lights. 
To-morrow for the pictures we shall paint — 
To-morrow for the statue we shall carve — 
To-day we '11 dream beneath the open sky 
And take our color, as the flowers take theirs. 

Hark! from the ilexes the nightingale 
Begins its beating prelude, like the throbs 
Of some quick heart, then pauses, then again 
Bursts into fitful jets of gurgling song, 
Then beats again ; and listen ! rising now 
To its full rapture thrills the shadowy wood 
With the delirious passion of its voice ; 
With dizzy trills, and low, deep, tearful notes, 
And hurried heaping of voluptuous tones 
That blent together in one intricate maze 



AT THE VILLA CONTI. 267 

Of sweet inextricable melodies, 
Whirl on and up, and circling lift and lift, 
And burst at last in scattered showers of notes, 
And leave us the sweet, silent afternoon. 

Rome, July 5, '52. 



THE BLACK-LETTER TEXT. 

Not till the light of Joj has passed away 
The orb of Patience rises full and great 

To rule our life with soft and shadowy sway, 
And sanctify the ruins of our state. 

When sorrow calls us, from the feast we rise. 
Its lights are glaring, trivial are its smiles. 

And Thought walks on 'mid buried memories. 
Like some cowled monk along the tomb-strewn 
aisles. 

We go to Silence — In its cell we sit 

And read the mournful missal of man's fate. 

The sad black-letter text in which is writ 
E'en the illumined chapter of the great. 



THE BLACK-LETTER TEXT. 269 

Girt round by walls we never can o'erpeer, 

With one dark gate, where all our pathways end, 

Puzzled we stand, in hope, but yet in fear. 
Unknowing where the ceaseless passers wend. 

" Farewell ! " they say, " To Love and Joy we go," 
We have not faith, or we should smile again, 

But ah ! we beat the gate, and wild with woe 
We struggle like a madman with liis chain. 

Yet, with this farthing candle of oui- Faith, 
Into the dark dread void beyond we peer, 

There each beholds upon the blank of death 
The trembhng shadows of his hope or fear. 



SONNET. 

It would not seem to me one half so strange 
To see the door with one burst open wide 
And feel you once more bounding to my side 
All full of Life and Joy — as seems this change, 
That hath upborne you from the senses' range, 
And left a blank that cannot be supplied. 
And wreck and ruin where were joy and pride, 
And hope, and love's perpetual interchange. 
I crave to see you, hear you once again. 
And nature has no more the charm to cheer, 
The sunshine hurts me with a secret pain 
I never knew when you were with us here. 
Dear spirit ! we are wretched and alone. 
But yet I pray you cannot hear our moan. 

Albano, April 3, 1854. 



THE AUTUMN CYCLAMEN 

A LITTLE timid thing it is, 

And though its sisters all are round 
It trembles at the slightest breeze, 

And ever gazes on the ground. 

It does not dare to be alone, 
And almost shudders to be seen, 

And yet it wears a purple crown 
As it were born to be a queen. 

The summer's latest child, it rears 
Its slender form of bashful grace 

And has its mother's dyuig tears 
Upon its paUid little face. 



272 THE AUTUMN CYCLAMEN. 

The autumn, when it earliest comes, 
Like a new step-mother is mild. 

But soon a sterner look assumes 
And harshly chills the orphan child. 

We see her in the dried-up grass. 
With yellow leaves around her shed. 

Fearing, when we who love her pass. 
And hanging down her pensive head. 

Villa Baeberini, 1853. 



DIRGE. 

Bear Mm gently to his tomb, 
Scatter roses on Ms bier, 

Pure in heart, in vernal bloom, 
He hath vanished from us here. 

Hushed and low be every strain, 
Even-tempered be our grief. 

Who could wish Mm back again. 
Even though his life were brief. 

He hath vanished from the shroud. 

Off the body we must bear. 

Like the hghtning from the cloud, 

Like a song into the air. 
18 



THE BIVOUAC. 

OuK camp fire fitfully flashes, 
Where darkly we bivouac, 

And the morning will see our ashes. 
But we come never back. 

We have the stars above us 
That burn with a pitying light, 

But despite the hearts that love us 
We are alone in the night. 

Alone, and none can reach us. 

Of all who would below. 
And there is nothing to teach us 

What we must die to know. 



THE BIVOUAC. 275 

Some struggle, their hot lips parching, 

Some die of sheer despair ; 
But we know not where we are marching. 

We know not what we are. 



Our comrade falls beside us, 
But we cannot give him breath, 

And in vain we strive to hide us 
Out of the sight of death. 



Through tight-pressed hps we mutter 
Our soldier watchword, Faith, 

If we speak more we stutter. 
And none knoweth what he saith. 



This is our solemn camping. 
In our bivouac at night. 

But where shall we be tramping 
In the morning's early light ? 



ARTEMIS. 

A SLENDER shape of graceful mien, 

With spirit tenderly serene 

O'er which had never passed a storm ; 

In feehng pure, in impulse warm : 

A face informed with serious light, 

Too peaceful to be gayly bright, 

Too young to know of pain and care. 

Too slight their wearmg weight to bear, 

She passed before my dreaming eyes 

When in the paling western skies 

The young moon trembhng strove to hide 

Within the clear sky's luminous tide. 

Again to full expansion grown 

We met when maidenhood had flown — 



ARTEMIS. 277 

A noble sweetness lit her eyes, 
Her look was calm as destiny's. 
Pure, serious, grandly self-possessed, 
Her passions rounded into rest. 
She stood — and far above I saw 
The full-orbed moon without a flaw 
Walk through the chambers of the night 
And comfort all the world with hght. 

Again, when youth and health had gone 
I saw her pallid cheek and wan. 
Life scarcely seemed to hnger there 
So visionary was her air. 
And sweeter than all words can tell 
The smile that ever said, " Farewell ! '* 
Within her sainthness of mood 
All joy, all passion was subdued. 
And as she passed, far overhead 
The morning twihght 'gan to spread, 
While thin and white before the day 
The waning moon paled fast away. 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

"And for our tong, that still is so empayred 
By travelling linguists, — I can prove it clear 
That no tong has the muses' utterance heyred 
For verse, and that swete music to the ear 
Strook out of Rhyme so naturally as this." 

Chapman. 

Give me of every language, first my vigorous 
English 

Stored with imported wealth, rich in its natural 
mines — 

Grand in its rhythmical cadence, simple for house- 
hold employment — 

Worthy the poet's song, fit for the speech of a man. 

Not from one metal alone the perfectest mirror is 

shapen, 
Not from one color is built the rainbow's aerial 

bridge, 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 279 

Instruments blending together yield the divinest of 

music, 
Out of a myriad flowers sweetest of honey is drawn. 

So unto thy close strength is welded and beaten 

together 
Iron dug from the North, ductile gold from the* 

South ; 
So unto thy broad stream the ice-torrents born in 

the mountains 
Rush, and the rivers pom* brimming with sun from 

the plains. 

Thou hast the sharp clean edge and the downright 

blow of the Saxon, 
Thou the majestical march and the stately pomp of 

the Latin, 
Thou the euphonious swell, the rhythmical roll of the 

Greek ; 
Thine is the elegant suavity caught from sonorous 

Italian, 



280 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

Thine the chivalric obeisance, the courteous grace 

of the Norman — 
Thine the Teutonic German's inborn guttural 

strength. 

Raftered by firm-laid consonants, windowed by open- 
ing vowels, 

Thou securely art built, free to the sun and the 
air; 

Over thy feudal battlements trail the wild tendrils 
of fancy. 

Where in the early morn warbled our earliest 
birds ; 

Science looks out from thy watch-tower, love whis- 
pers in at thy lattice, 

While o'er thy bastions wit flashes its glittering sword. 

Not by corruption rotted nor slowly by ages de- 
graded. 

Have the sharp consonants gone crumbling away 
from our words ; 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 281 

Virgin and clean is their edge like granite blocks 

■ chiselled b j Egypt ; 
Just as when Shakespeare and Milton laid them in 
glorious verse. 

Fitted for every use Hke a great majestical river, 

Blending thy various streams, stately thou flowest 
along, 

Bearing the white-winged ship of Poesy over thy 
bosom, 

Laden with spices that come out of the tropical 
isles. 

Fancy's pleasuring yacht with its bright and flutter- 
ing pennons, 

Logic's frigates of war and the toil-worn barges of 
trade. 

How art thou freely obedient unto the poet or 

speaker 
When, in a happy hour, thought into speech he 

translates ; 



282 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

Caught on the word's sharp angles flash the bright 

hues of his fancy — 
Grandly the thought rides the words, as a good 

horseman his steed. 

Now, clear, pure, hard, bright, and one by one, 

hke to hail-stones, 
Short words fall from his lips fast as- the first of 

a shower — 
Now in a twofold column, Spondee, Iamb, and 

Trochee, 
Unbroke, firm-set, advance, retreat, trampling 

along — 
Now with a sprightlier springiness bounding in trip- 
licate syllables. 
Dance the elastic Dactyhcs in musical cadences 

on. 
Now their voluminous coil intertangling like huge 

anacondas 
Roll overwhelmingly onward the sesquipedahan 

words. 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 283 

Flexile and free in tlij gait and simple in all thy 

construction, 
Yielding to every turn thou bearest thy rider 

along ; 
Now like our hackney or draught-horse serving our 

commonest uses, 
Now bearing grandly the Poet Pegasus-like to the 

sky. - 

Thou art not prisoned in fixed rules, thou art no 
slave to a grammar. 

Thou art an eagle uncaged scorning the perch and 
the chain, 

Hadst thou been fettered and formalized, thou hadst 
been tamer and weaker. 

How could the poor slave walk with thy grand 
freedom of gait ? 

Let then grammarians rail and let foreigners sigh 
for thy signposts. 

Wandering lost in thy maze, thy wilds of magni- 
ficent growth. 



284 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

Call thee incongruous, wild, of rule and of reason 

defiant ; 
I in thy wildness a grand freedom of character 

find. 
So with irregular outline tower up the sky-piercing 

mountains 
Rearing o'er yawning chasms lofty precipitous 

steeps. 
Spreading o'er ledges unclimbable, meadows and 

slopes of green smoothness, 
Bearing the flowers in their clefts, losing their peaks 

in the clouds. 

Therefore it is that I praise thee and never can 

cease from rejoicing. 
Thinking that good stout English is mine and my 

ancestors' tongue ; 
Give me its varying music, the flow of its free 

modulation — 
I will not covet the full roll of the glorious 

Greek, — 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 285 

Luscious and feeble Italian, Latin so formal and 

stately, 
French with its nasal lisp nor German inverted and 

harsh — 
Not while our organ can speak with its many and 

wonderful voices — 
Play on the soft flute of love, blow the loud trumpet 

of war, 
Sing with the high sesquialtro, or drawing its full 

diapason 
Shake all the air with the grand storm of its pedals 

and stops. 



SAPPHO. 

My love is false and my life is lorn, 

Roll on, oh ruthless sea ! 
The wreath from my head is rudely torn, 

Moan, with me ! 

Curses on her who stole my love ! 

Curses, Lesbos, light on thee ! 
False to her, oh! Phaon prove 

As to me. 



There is the necklace once he gave — 
Take it false and changeful sea! 

There is the harp for thy treacherous wave ! 
Now take me ! 



SONG. 

I AM weary with rowing — with rowing, 
Let me drift along with the stream, 

I am weary with going — with going, 
Let me lay me down and dream. 

I can struggle no longer — no longer, 

Here in thine arms let me he. 
In thine arms which are stronger — are stronger 

Than all of this earth — let me die. ' 

The stream in its flowing — its flowing, 

Shall bear us adown to the sea ; 
I am weary with rowing — with rowing, 

I yield me to love and thee. 



288 SONG. 

On thy bosom reposing — reposing, 
While night draws its veil on the sky, 

And my eyehds are closing — are closing. 
Oh! thus let me hve — let me die. 



TO G. W. C. AND C. P. C. 

The hours on the old Piazza 

That overhangs the sea 
With a tender and pensive sweetness 

At times steal over me ; 
And agam o'er the balcony leaning, 

We hst to the surf on the beach, 
That fills with its solemn warning 

The mtervals of speech. 

We three sit at night in the moonhght, 

As we sat in the summer gone. 
And we talk of art and nature 

And sing as we sit alone ; 
We sing the old songs of Sorrento, 
Where oranges hang o'er the sea, 
And our hearts are tender with dreaming 
Of days that no more shall be. 
19 



290 TO G. W. C. AND C. P. C. 

How gajly the hours went with ua 

In those old days that are gone, 
Ah ! would we were all together, 

Wliere now I am standing alone. 
Could Hfe be again so perfect? 

Ah, never ! these years so drain 
The heart of its freshness of feeling. 

But I long, though the longing be vain. 



THE LOCUST-TREES. 

Fair locust-trees — fair locust-trees, 
The noontide bower of booming bees 
That clustering poise with busy noise 
And round your whitening blossoms hum, 
When twilight gray, at close of day. 
Creeps nestling deeper in your gloom. 
And fire-flies Hghten through the night, 
Again to you we '11 come. - 

Fair locusWrees — dear locust-trees. 
Oh ! whisper not unto the breeze 
What yesternight in love's true phght 
We swore by all the stars above. 
Fill with perfume the twilight gloom, 
And o'er us spread your blossomy roof 
To keep the moon from prying down 
To stare upon our love. 



292 THE LOCUST-TREES. 

Fair locust-trees — sweet locust-trees 



Tell not by day the mysteries, 

The loves and fears, the night wind hears 

When hiding in your leafy breast. 

Oh ! breathe no word of all you heard, 

When lips to clinging lips were pressed, 

And burning Youth its maddened troth 

Of Passion first expressed. 

Fair locust-trees — dear locust-trees, 
From you let none the secret tease. 
And you shall bloom for years to come 
And we wiU tend you tiU you die. 
When glow-worms light the bank at night, 
And crickets chrr and soft bats fly. 
We shall be near — then locusts dear 
Hide us from every eye. 

Castel Gandolfo, July, 1852. 



S ORRENTO. 

The midnight, thick with cloud, 

Hangs o'er the city's jar, 
The spmt's shell is in the crowd. 

The s$>irit is afar; 
Far, where in shadowy gloom 

Sleeps the dark orange grove, 
My sense is drunk with its perfume, 

My heart with love. 

The slumberous, whispering sea. 
Creeps up the sands to lay 

Its shding bosom fringed with pearls 
Upon the rounded bay. 

List ! all the trembling leaves 
Are rustling overhead. 



294 . SORRENTO. 

Where purple grapes are hanging dark 
On the trelhsed loggia spread. 

Far off, a misted cloud, 

Hangs fair Inarim^. 
The boatman's song from the lighted boat 

Rises from out the sea. 
We listen — then thy voice 

Pours forth a honeyed rhyme ; 
Ah I for the golden nights we passed 

In our Itahan time. 

There is the laugh of girls 

That walk along the shore, 
The marinaio calls to them 

As he suspends his oar. 
Vesuvius rumbles sullenly. 

With fitful lurid gleam, 
The background of all Naples life, 

The nightmare of its dream. 



SORRENTO. 295 

Oh ! lovely, lovely Italy, 

I yield me to thy spell ! 
Reach the guitar, my dearest friend. 

We '11 sing, " Home ! fare thee well ! " 
Oh ! world of work and noise. 

What spell hast thou for me ? 
The syren Beauty charms me here 

Beyond the sea. 



PROLO GUE, 

SPOKEN AT THE INAUGURATION OF CRAWFORD'S BRONZE 
STATUE OF BEETHOVEN, AT THE BOSTON MUSIC HALL, 
MARCH 1, 1856. 

Lift the veil ! the work is finished ; fresh created 

from the hands 
Of the artist, — grand and simple, there our great 

Beethoven stands. 
Claj no longer — he has risen from the buried 

mould of earth. 
To a golden form transfigured bj a new and 

glorious birth. 
Art hath bid the evanescent pause and know no 

more decay; 
Made the mortal shape immortal, that to dust has 

passed away. 
There's the brow by thought o'erladen, with its 

tempest of wild hair ; 



PROLOGUE. 297 

There the mouth so sternly silent and the square 

cheeks seamed with care ; 
There the eyes so visionary, straining out, yet 

seeing naught 
But the inward world of genius and the ideal 

forms of thought ; 
There the hand that gave its magic to the cold, 

dead, ivory keys. 
And from out them tore the struggling chords of 

mighty symphonies. 
There the figure, calm, concentred, on its breast 

the great head bent ; — 
Stand forever thus, great master ! thou thy fittest 

monument ! 

Poor in life, by friends deserted, through disease 
and pain and care, 

Bravely, stoutly hast though striven, never yielding 
to despair ; 

High the claims of Art upholding ; firm to Free- 
dom; in a crowd 



298 PROLOGUE. 

Where the highest bent as courtiers, speaking 

manfully and loud. 
In thy silent world of deafness, broken by no 

human word, 
Music sang with voice ideal, while thy listening 

spirit heard ; 
Tones consoling and prophetic, tones to raise, refine 

and cheer ; 
Deathless tones, that thou hast garnered to refresh 

and charm us here. 
And for all these " riches fineless," all these 

wondrous gifts of thine, 
We have only Fame's dry laurel on thy careworn 

brow to twine. 
We can only say. Great Master, take the homage 

of our heart ; 
Be the High Priest in our temple, dedicate to thee 

and Art ; 
Stand before us, and enlarge us with thy presence 

and thy power, 
And o'er all Art's deeps and shallows light us like 

a beacon-tower. 



PROLOGUE. 299 

In the mighty realm of Music there is but a single 

speech, 
Universal as the world is, that to every heart can 

reach. 
Thou witliin that realm art monarch, but the 

humblest vassal there 
Knows the accents of that language when it calls 

to war or prayer. 
Underneath its world-wide Banyan, friends the 

gathering nations sit ; 
Red Sioux and dreamy German dance and feast 

and fight to it. 
When the storm of battle rages, and the brazen 

trumpet blares, 
Cheering on the serried tumult, in the van its 

meteor flares ; 
Sings the laurelled song of conquest, o'er the buried 

comrade wails. 
Plays the peaceful pipes of shepherds in the lone 

Etrurian vales ; 



300 PROLOGUE. 

Whispers love beneath the lattice, where the honey- 
suckle clings ; 

Crowns the bowl and cheers the dancers, and its 
peace to sorrow brings ; — 

Nature knows its wondrous magic, always speaks 
in tune and rhyme ; 

Doubles in the sea the heaven, echoes on the rocks 
the chime. 

All her forests sway harmonious, all her torrents 
lisp in song ; 

And the starry spheres make music, gladly journey- 
ing along. 

Thou hast touched its mighty mystery, with a finger 

as of fire ; 
Thrilled the heart with rapturous longing, bade the 

struggling soul aspire ; 
Through thy daring modulations, mounting up o'er 

dizzy stairs 
Of harmonic change and progress, into high Elysian 

airs. 



PROLOGUE. . 301 

Where the wings of angels graze us, and the voices 

of the spheres 
Seem not far, and glad emotions fill the silent eyes 

with tears. 
What a vast, majestic structure thou hast builded 

out of sound. 
With its high peak piercing Heaven, and its base 

deep underground. 
Vague as air, yet firm and real to the spiritual eye. 
Seamed with fire its cloudy bastions far away up- 

hfted lie. 
Like those sullen shapes of thunder we behold at 

close of day, 
Piled upon the far horizon, where the jagged light- 
nings play. 
A^vful voices, as from Hades, thrill us, growhng from 

its heart ; 
Sudden splendors blaze from out it, cleaving its 

black walls apart; 
White-winged birds dart forth and vanish, singing, 

as they pass from sight, 



302 PROLOGUE. 

Till at last it lifts, and 'neath it shows a field of 

amber light 
Where some single star is shining, throbbing Hke a 

new-born thing. 
And the earth, all drenched in splendor, lets its 

happy voices sing. 

Topmost crown of ancient Athens towered the 
Phidian Parthenon ; 

Upon Freedom's noble forehead. Art the starry 
jewel, shone. 

Here as- yet in our Republic, in the furrows of our 
soil. 

Slowly grows Art's timid blossom 'neath the heavy 
foot of toil. 

Spurn it not — but spare it, nurse it, till it glad- 
den all the land ; 

Hail to-day this seed of promise, planted by a gen- 
erous hand — 

Our first statue to an artist — nobly given, nobly 
planned. 



PROLOGUE. 303 

Never is a nation finished while it wants the grace 

of Art — 
Use must borrow robes from Beauty, life must rise 

above the mart. 
Faith and love are all ideal, speaking with a music 

. tone — 
And without their touch of magic, labor is the 

Devil's own. 
Therefore are we glad to greet thee, master artist, 

to thy place, 
For we need m all our living Beauty and ideal 

grace. 
Mostly here, to lift our nation, move its heart and 

calm its nerves. 
And to round hfe's angled duties to imaginative 

curves. 
Mid the jarring din of trajfic, let the Orphic tone 

of Art 
Lull the barking Cerberus in us, soothe the cares 

that gnaw the heart. 



304 PROLOGUE. 

With thy universal language, that our feeble sjoeech 

transcends, 
Wmg our thoughts that creep and grovel, come to 

us when speaking ends. 
Bear us into realms ideal, where the cant of com- 
mon sense 
Dhas no more its heartless maxims to the jingling 

of its pence. 
Thence down dropped into the Actual, we shall on 

our garments bear 
Perfume of an unknown region, beauty of celestial - 

air ; 
Life shaU wear a nobler aspect, joy shall greet us 

in the street ; 
Earthy dust of low ambition shall be shaken from 

our feet. 
Evil spirits that torment us, into air shall vanish 

all, 
And the magic harp of David soothe the hamited 

heart of Saul. 



PROLOGUE. 805 

As of yore the swart Egyptians rent the air with 

choral song, 
Wlien Osiris' golden statue triumphing they bore 

along ; 
As along the streets of Florence, borne in glad 

procession went 
Cimabue's famed Madonna, praised by voice and 

instrument ; 
Let our voices sing thy praises, let our instruments 

combine, 
Till the hall with triumph echo, for the hour and 

place are thine. 



20 



L^EN vol. 

The corn is reaped from off my field, 
But half the ears are spoiled with rot 
And all is starveling, and not 

What happier acres yield. 

The fallow of the year gives stop. 

Say ! when the spring comes round again, 
Is it Avorth while to sow my grain 
And try another crop ? 

I know not ! come to me and say 
Good friend ! if this thin, arid soil. 
Is worth the tilling and the toil 
I seem to throw away ? 



l'envoi. 307 

Or is it better it should stand 
With scarlet poppj, buttercup, 
And dandelion peeping up, 

A simple pasture land ? 

A lazy pasture land of ease 

Where sheep may crop and goats may graze, 
And wavering foot-paths make their ways 
To httle cottages ? 

A little Common, unimproved 

That care and pains have never irked 
Where we may say, " we have not worked. 
But we have only loved ? " 

Jan. '56. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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